Twenty Grand

Please God, no. He’s writing again.

Making me nervous. I want to ask him about it.

But if I ask him about it, it’s all up and we’re done for.

Don’t ask him, Ray, I beg myself.

“Watchu writin’, there, sheriff?”

Shit, Ray. I said don’t ask Him.

He gives me a look without moving his head up from that black book, with his light clipped on his shoulder so he could see in the fading day. Pencil still moving across it like he’s eating up all I got to say and then some. I can hear the river from off behind him, louder now that the barn was gone.

“Walk me through it again, there, Ray, You say you come home around 7 o’clock and it looked like…”

“Looked like the fire had been goin’ for a while by then. That’s what I said before.”

Still he’s writing. Still he’s glaring at me.

“Uh-huh,” he says and turns his eyes back to the black book. Finishes writing and folds that thing up closed and snaps the band around it shut. I wish I knew what was on them pages. I can’t stand still. Hell, I can never stand still when I’m nervous. Denny says that’s part of my problem, but what does Denny know about it? We’re both in it now and he can’t figure to make some kind of plan of what to do about it, which is why I’m standing here in the yard talking to Sheriff Pruitt, half dancing back and forth in front of him.

“You ok, son? You look like you got somewhere to go.”

“Huh me? Heh, no sir, I ain’t got nowhere to go. Why, you think there’s something happening somewhere else?”

“What I think don’t matter much, Ray. And I don’t care about what may happen unless it’s got to do with something that did happen. Right now it’s what did happen that’s important. I’m just making sure I got the story as straight as I can get it. So just stay with me right here until we get that, okay?”

Man I wish Denny was out here with me.

“You seen your brother Denny lately?” Sheriff Pruitt still looks like he can see right through me.

I stiffen up, stop jittering.

“Well yes sir, I see Denny everyday. He’s my brother, ain’t he?” I try a smile on. See if that helps things.

Sheriff looks like he’s holding back an insult and just clasps his lips together like it hurts to do so before answering me back.

“He’s your brother, alright, Ray. I do reckon you see each other often.” He turns to look at where the barn stood before today although there ain’t much to see now that the sun’s about gone. He keeps scanning around the yard while I think of how to answer.

“Everyday, sir.”

He turns and looks straight at me like I said something out of place.

“Yes, Ray. When was the most recent time, today, that you saw your brother Denny.”

“Oh, right. Heh. Yeah. I saw Denny…’bout lunchtime? Maybe a bit after? He was going over to the Mound, had to meet Jerry about a truck they was lookin’ at buyin’. For the Yard.” I try that smile on again.

Everybody knew about Daddy’s tool yard. Me and Denny been working there since grammar school. Soon to be our tool yard unless Ma takes it from us.

Oh shit.

Ma. We forgot about Ma.

I hope Pruitt can’t see it on my face.

“And did Denny come back any time before you left for the Lodge?”

I acted like I had to think it through real good one more time.

“No, sir. No. He did not.” I looked over toward the river, away from the house. “Come home before I left.”

Pruitt grabbed that black book again. Scribbled something down.

“For the Lodge,” I said, slowly, so he could get it all.

“For the Lodge,” he repeated and kept on scribbling.

He sighed like I was feeling, and dropped his hands down to his hips, placing them bent at the wrist on top of that shiny belt of his, still holding the black book and his pencil.

“I could just about stand to head there right now myself, Ray.”

I bounced my head up and down, grinning like a fool.

Sheriff Pruitt slowly turned and started moseying around a little path he was making in the yard. I could see him working through something in his head. His back was to me. I thought about how much I wanted to get out of there. How much I wanted the Sheriff to leave.

A door slammed inside the house behind me.

Sheriff Pruitt stopped, and turned right back around. He looked past me to the house. Then fixed his eyes on me again.

“Where did you say your Ma was?”

Denny didn’t say anything about what to say about Ma.

Shit, Ray. Don’t muck this up or Denny’ll come after you next.

“Town.” I blurted out. “She went into town. Eileen was meetin’ her at the Train depot.”

Sheriff paused, hands still on his hips like that. It seemed like forever until he started talking again.

“There’s no train depot in town, Ray.”

Shit.

"The one closest, I mean. Not here. The one over in, uh…”

“Middletown?” He leaned in for my answer.

“Yeah! Middletown. She’s over there...in Middletown.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sheriff wrote something in the black book again. He closed it, but didn’t snap the band this time. Just kept it in his hand, right there at his side.

“Well I am sure she will just be devastated by all this that’s gone on tonight. Not just her husband but the barn, too.”

I heard the word conviction, once, at church a while back. Preacher said it means when a person believes something deep, deep down, and is willing to do whatever it takes because of that belief, that’s conviction. Said it means that when a person with conviction speaks, you know they mean what they say, cause they live it.

When Sheriff Pruitt said that about Ma being devastated, there wasn’t no conviction in what he said at all.

I almost laughed because of it.

Pruitt’s been here plenty of times before on account of Daddy. Whole town knew about Daddy and his drinking. If it weren’t that the Sheriff and everyone else was more scared of Ma than they were of Daddy something would have been done about Daddy much sooner than tonight. I figure there might be some kind of relief for the Sheriff out of all of this. No more Daddy means no more coming here to clean up whatever mess was waiting for the Sheriff and his men. Maybe Denny would change, too. Calm that anger in him. It was his idea to do nothing today. I watched him change something awful last Spring when one day Daddy went up to the loft after wailing on Denny the worst he’s done him. Sheriff mentioned something that day about how once in about a hundred years every river floods something fiercer than what you’ve known it could ever do before. And when it does it takes just about everything around with it, off into nowhere, and never to come back.

Denny’s been waiting for the chance ever since. So I guess the river finally did it this time. And it took the barn and Daddy with it. "We ain't killing him, Ray," he said to me just hours ago. "But we sure as hell ain't got to try and save him."

The Sheriff rubbed his forehead with his writing hand and fussed up his face like he was coming out of a daydream.

“Well, Ray. I sure am sorry about your Daddy. I thank you for answering my questions. This all looks like one big accident, with your Daddy caught in a mess of his own making, I reckon.”

I didn’t even hear what the Sheriff said, let alone make sense of it. I could only think about that black book.

“What’s all that you been writin’, Sheriff? I mean, you been here so many times before, but I never seen you writin’ anything.”

There. I done it. I just couldn’t help it, could I? Nice one, Ray. Denny’s gonna go off. After all this, and what we just done, how’s it figure that I will be the one to break it open?

“I have a job to do, Ray. And this being what it is and bigger than most of what we’ve seen around here for some time, Hell, bigger than what I’ve seen in my time as Sheriff, I figured I would be the one taking the official statements. Normally that is Deputy Radison’s doing.”

He stepped closer to me.

This was it. It’s over. We’re done.

I’m done.

He’s figured it all out that me and Denny was there the whole time. That it was us who saw the fire go up out back, and came down to see the door was blocked but didn’t do nothing to stop the blaze or help Daddy out. He knew that Denny was right now up in the house, waiting for it all to blow over, and shit maybe Denny heard all that I said and how I mucked it all up, and now I’m going to jail and it wasn’t even my idea. Maybe this is payback for all the times Denny got it from Daddy while I ran off to get away.

God help me. God do something and I promise I’ll make it up to you.

Sheriff Pruitt was standing so close now. There wasn't no way I could escape his gaze. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed pretty hard. I about caught my heart coming out of my throat and chewed it back down.

“But there is nothing to say about tonight, other than the obvious, Ray. Your Daddy was here all by himself, all afternoon. Got drunk like he normally did, and knocked that old kerosene lamp off the post in the loft. You know I gave him that lamp? Back when we went fishing over in Hamilton, over at Crawford’s holler. He said he couldn’t see where he was casting, and damn it all if I dragged him all the way out there and he ended up in the water cause I kept the lamp all to myself.”

I stared right back at the Sheriff, not entirely sure what he was getting at. Not daring to let my hopes up for a second. I was done for, and that was that. God help me now.

“You know, that lamp, Sheriff...he...he kept it…”

"On the post in the loft. I know, Ray. I can’t help but feel a little bit like maybe if I hadn’t taken him fishing that one day, had never given him that lamp, maybe this would not have happened like it did.”

He took a deep breath and looked over at the spot where the barn stood just that afternoon.

“But what’s done is done. The Lord knows when it’s our time to go, and ain’t a damn thing you, or I, or Denny or your Ma could have done to stop it.”

He looked back at me, his arm around my neck somehow.

“Ain’t that it, Ray? Sometimes it just...happens.”

I didn’t know how to answer. I just swallowed hard and tipped my head a nod. Sheriff Pruitt patted my shoulder and took his arm back. He was still holding that black book. He held it up and tapped the air with it.

“But I got what I need, and that’s all there is to it. I am sure that Marshall McWilliams understood the same to be true. Said he found that lamp all charred and twisted up like it had been through a grinder.”

He said that last part a bit loud, I thought, and he looked toward the house.

I turned to look that way too. I saw Denny’s outline upstairs in the window. The glow of a lamp all lit up behind him. He had been listening. Please God.

“I will leave you all to your grief, and hope you can do something about that barn. It was a good one. Finest one built around here, that’s for sure.” He strode over to a last bit of charred post sticking up about a foot out of the ground. “Must have taken some serious heat to claim it all like it did. What do you figure that cost your Daddy to build?”

“Bout twenty grand.” I said without thinking about it. “Old Matt Hagan built it for Daddy. Said it should have cost him prolly twice that, but you know how Daddy was about spending money.”

Sheriff Pruitt just gave a knowing glance and a quick tilt of his head.

“I sure do, Ray. I sure do know an awful lot about the way your Daddy did things.”

He turned and walked slowly toward his truck.

“Well Ray, you have as good a night as you can. And you make sure your Ma knows I was thinking about her. Your brother too,” he gave me a look,” as soon as you see him.”

“I sure will, Sheriff. I sure will”

He got in the truck, started it up, backed out, turned on the road and off he went.

I stood in the yard, wondering at it all. Daddy was dead. Ma was who knows where. The Yard was hers now. The money from the barn, too. Those being the only two things Daddy ever really cared about. I suppose Denny didn’t figure too far into it.

We forgot about Ma.

I turned and went in the house. I called up the stairs to Denny. I heard his footsteps in the hall, then watched him coming down the stairs all covered in light, like Jesus Himself descending from on high. My savior, the one who took away all the pain Daddy had caused. He was swinging Daddy’s lamp in his right hand.

“So this burned up in the fire, did it?”

“That’s what the Sheriff said.”

“You almost blew it, you sonofabitch, you know that right?” Denny grinned at me.

“I know it. Lord I know it.” I released my shoulders for the first time that night.

Denny walked past me and out the back door. “Come on,” he said.

I followed.

He was walking toward what was left of the barn, the lamp held out in front of him. As we got close, I noticed something leaning up against the charred post. Denny saw it too.

He bent over and picked it up.

“The hell is this?”

I stepped up and took it from his hand.

Sheriff Pruitt’s black book.

I turned around to look at the drive, and then out to the road.

“I suppose it’s the Sheriff’s. We ought to take it to him”

“Wrong,” said Denny, and he took it back. He unwrapped the strap and opened it up. “Too hard to read out here,” he said. “Especially since we ain’t got Daddy’s lamp to see by.” His face was lit up from within, so much so that it would have glowed even if he wasn’t holding that very same lamp up to it. There was a grin on it I’d never seen before. Like something from somewhere deep. Way back deep, like in the river, before the river ever even ran through here.

Denny tossed the black book into the pile of black ash. He walked over and set the lamp on top of it. He stood there for a minute, all coiled up inside but standing real calm, like Denny always done.

I heard him mutter something, then all of a sudden he started stomping on the lamp. I jumped back.

“You crazy!” I shouted. I thought he might go up in flames the way that lamp came undone under his foot. I thought for a minute he’d be swallowed by that burst of light and heat. But he just kept stomping, and laughing. I stood fixed where I was. I didn’t know what to do but I sure as hell knew what not to do.

Then the light faded back down. Somehow Denny didn’t get burned. I still don’t know how exactly, other than to figure that if you’ve been to hell and back more than a few times then a little fire now and then ain’t getting to you much at all.

I finally had the sense to move my lead feet. I walked up to him there, in the middle of the empty space. The lamp was all smashed and twisted. There wasn’t much left of the black book. Denny was huffing and sweaty.

I didn’t know what all to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Ma gets it all.”

Denny didn’t say nothing.

“The Yard and the barn money. Prolly twenty grand.”

Denny was silent.

“That’s what Old Matt Hagan said about how much Daddy paid him. For the barn when it was built.”

Denny just stood there.

“But I guess the point is that Daddy can’t get us no more. Right?”

“Sixty.” Denny was staring at the river.

“That’s why we didn’t do nothin’.”

“Sixty,” Denny said again. I was confused. I didn’t want to let on, though.

“He can’t get to us no more, Denny.”

“The barn was worth sixty. Daddy had it insured for sixty, but had the paperwork made out from the insurance to look like it was only twenty. To fool Ma. I watched him work on Whitey Taylor to cover it all up. It was actually sixty for what Daddy had insurance on it, in case it ever burned up. Daddy used to say a lot when he was drunk up in the loft. Used to say a lot about how Ma was coming after him. About how Ma was going to burn down the barn with him in it one day and collect on all the insurance money from what was on the barn. ‘Fuck you Mary!’ He’d holler and wail. Kick up his feet and stomp on the floor. “Fuck you and your twenty grand over my dead smelly ass!’”

I wasn’t sure what all Denny was saying. I knew sometimes he’d wander over to the barn when Daddy was drunk, getting as close as he could to the danger inside, while I ran on down the river as far as I could get. What I didn’t know was that Daddy would holler and yell. If ever I got too close to him drunk he was real quiet. Scared me shitless. Worse than the beatings the times I did get ‘em.

“So when Ma goes to collect for the barn, she’ll only get twenty of it. Whitey knows to hold back the forty for me and you. That makes twenty each. I watched Whitey promise Daddy. You know he’s good for it. How much Whitey hates Ma.”

Ma.

Who knows how long she’ll be gone this time.

Who knows if she really won’t care that Daddy was dead. Maybe she would. Denny and me sure would never know one way or another. Now we could get off on our own somewhere else.

I stared at my brother, wondering what was going through his mind. How it must have felt to him that Daddy couldn’t touch him any more. That we was about to be as free as we’ve ever been.

I thought about Sheriff Pruitt, and what he said to me that night. How many times he’d been to our place before, and how he probably wouldn’t ever be back.

I thought about the barn, and Daddy trapped inside. Did he know what was happening, and did he think it was Ma, like he used to say? Was he laughing when he went up in all that fire?

I looked over at the river, all black and hollow and barely making a sound now in the darkness.

That black book. Burned up. Swallowed by Denny’s jubilee. The words inside never being read by the Sheriff, or Deputy Radison or anyone else for that matter.

The river was quiet, but waiting. Denny was quiet, too. My mind couldn’t get there, to be quiet. I just kept thinking about all that was there that night where the barn once stood.

That and the twenty grand that Denny said was waiting to be mine.

God bless my brother Denny. I guess Ma, wherever she was. God bless the Sheriff and the Marshall, and even Whitey Taylor. God bless the river that floods more than expected, and the river behind our house that gave me a place to run to.

And God?

Please forgive us for wanting to be free.