Chapter 23: Small Virtues and Petty Vices

The summer was making its progress and along with it, Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation. Miss Edna was rehabilitated, gambling had been brought to an end at Cole’s, Maddie Flanagan had been reunited with Plastic Jesus, and Nate was becoming well read and adept at two-handed canasta. Nate wondered how much more improvement Davis Corners could tolerate.

Nate had a dream several weeks after Maddie Flanagan’s funeral. He dreamed he was at Founder’s Hill and could see Jim Frank’s statue hanging from the old tree. As he walked up to it, he noticed he had his grandaddy’s gun in his hand. The statue looked like he remembered it from Jim Frank’s place, comical and garish. Suddenly, it swung out toward him and startled him. Instinctively, Nate shot at it.

He walked up to the statue to see how badly he’d damaged it. As he got closer, he saw that it wasn’t the statue any more. It was Washington. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at Nate in a hurt sort of way. Nate tried to explain that he’d been aiming at the statue, not at Washington, but he just kept looking at Nate with that hurt expression.

Nate woke up drenched in sweat, the way he used to when he dreamed about his grandfather. He looked at the chair across the room and jumped in fright. It looked like somebody sitting in the dark, keeping some sort of sinister vigil over him. He reminded himself to start hanging up his clothes in the closet from now on, rather than draping them across the chair. In the meantime, he forced himself to stare at the apparition until it went back to being his mislaid clothes. He was on the verge of being successful when the pile moved.

“What you looking at, butthole?”

Nate had almost completely forgotten about Grub Hanley, but he’d returned. Nate instantly remembered every sense of dread and terror Grub had ever instilled in him and wondered how he could’ve ever let his guard down. He thought about calling out for help, Grandmother Tillman could handle the likes of Grub. Grub anticipated the thought and Nate heard the metallic, ratcheting sound of a revolver being cocked.

“I threw your clothes on the floor, butthole. Put them on and let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Nate tried to get dressed. He had no strength in hands and couldn’t tie his sneaker laces.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Even in his panic, Nate noticed that Grub still substituted clichés for thinking. He knew that if he were to survive, it would be by out-thinking Grub, or by a miracle. Not placing much faith in miracles, Nate concentrated on keeping his mind alert.

Grub motioned Nate downstairs and kept poking him in the back with the revolver. They went through the kitchen and out the back door. Grandmother Tillman’s screen door in back had a lazy spring like the door at Hank Thompson’s store. Nate opened it wide as he went through. Grub Hanley came out close behind him and they walked off the back porch and toward the fields. A few seconds later, the screen door smacked shut behind them. Grub cursed and they both looked back. Nate expected every light to come on and Old Redemption to start barking. Nothing happened.

“Get a move on and don’t make no more noise,” Grub said.

Nate shifted his hopes back to a miracle.

They walked through the fields and into the woods. The woods went on for miles. Grandmother Tillman had never let Nate explore back there, so he had no idea what the lay of the land was. The moon was full, but he had a hard time seeing and had to grope his way slowly.

All the time they walked, Grub kept taunting Nate about the incident in the schoolyard and that night on Founder’s Hill. Finally, Nate tried to engage him in conversation just to get him to ease up.

“Where’d you go?” Nate said. “You been living back here in these woods all this time?”

“I been here and there,” Grub said cautiously. “Went to Henderson for awhile. I’ve been camping around here for a couple of days.”

“Henderson’s a nice place. What made you come back here?” Nate was afraid he already knew the answer.

“Ever hear the phrase ‘eat shit and die?’” Grub laughed quite a while at that.

Nate had a hard time picking his way through the woods. He kept stumbling and brushing up against trees, He could tell his face was all scratched from walking into branches. He tried to make as much noise as possible, but had little hope that it would do any good. He was certain Grub was going to kill him. They were so alone in the woods that no one would here the gunshot, let alone the pitiful noises Nate was making now.

After awhile, the damp, dirt-smell of the woods was joined by a smoky aroma, and Nate assumed they were coming up to Grub’s campsite. Suddenly, there were no more branches swiping at his face and he could see in the moonlight that they had come to a clearing. In the center was a campfire with its embers still glowing dull red.

“Get the fire going, butthole,” Grub said, then dumped himself down onto the ground. He waved the gun at Nate. “Now.”

Nate added some sticks that were piled up next to the fire and he could see empty cans and other trash strewn around. He didn’t see any kind of tent or lean-to, nor did he see any bedding. He blew on the embers and eventually new flames licked up and around the sticks he had piled on the fire. As the fire grew, he could see a black slash that ate up the light that softly coated everything else. Grub saw him looking at the scab of emptiness.

“Small cave. Makes a cozy little spot to sleep.” Grub was both proud and pleased with his discovery. “There’s a small road about a half mile down that way, but I avoid it mostly.”

Grub had found his element. He was a wild man slinking around the woods and sleeping in a cave.

Nate suddenly wondered if the cave was Iron Hoop. The thought gave him goose bumps all over, and he shuddered.

“What’s the matter, butthole, scared?”

Nate knew he had to get away. He knew that Grub intended to do horrible things to him and was going to kill him. He mustered whatever courage had come over him that day on the schoolyard and kicked the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. He started to run like that day on the baseball field, but this time Grub slid over and blocked his path. He stood there grinning behind the revolver aimed straight at Nate’s head. In the firelight, he truly looked Neanderthal with his stubble beard and crooked, yellow teeth. Nate just stood there crying and on the verge of throwing up. He would have begged, but he was too terrified.

Nate heard a low growling, but it wasn’t coming from Grub. It came from just outside the ring of firelight, and Grub and Nate both looked over just in time to see a shape emerge at top speed and leap the open fifteen feet of clearing. White teeth bit into Grub’s arm that held the pistol, and he screamed in shock and pain. The gun dropped, and Grub and the beast fought fiercely on the ground. Nate was paralyzed in disbelief for a moment. It was Old Redemption.

Grub’s hand shot free from Old Redemption’s mouth and grabbed the gun. It went off and Nate noted that the air smelled of gunpowder. Old Redemption lay sprawled out on the ground and Grub pulled himself up. His shirt was torn and his face was scratched and bloody. He looked at Nate and leveled the gun in his direction. Voices called out behind Nate in the woods, men calling to each other. Grub’s eyes widened with panic. Nate turned, and he started running toward the voices. He was vaguely aware of the tree branches snapping around him as he ran and heard a metal click among the wooden snapping sounds. No shot or explosion followed it, and he kept running and running, getting whipped and battered by the trees.

“Got him” a voice said, as strong arms wrapped around Nate and wrestled him down.

“Easy” another voice said. “That’s Mrs. Tillman’s grandson.”

Nate opened his eyes and squinted into a flashlight aimed at his face. The man was wearing a uniform. Nate was already crying too hard to cry any harder, so he squeezed back on the strong arms that had grabbed him. He calmed down just enough to vomit the entire contents of his stomach. The trooper pulled him back from fainting into his own puke, and both men laughed.

“Me, too, kid,” one of them said. “I’d do the same thing and don’t think I wouldn’t.”

More voices yelled off in the woods and finally more gunshots exploded. One of the troopers ran off in the direction of the shots, while the other got Nate up and hurried him in the other direction. Nate had no idea where they were, but they came to a narrow dirt road and a state patrol car with its lights flashing. The radio was crackling away and Nate could hear out-of-breath voices barking out code numbers through its static. A long silence followed while Nate sat and watched the leaves alternate from red to blue as the lights on top of the car swirled around. Then everything went black.

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“Nate?” The woman’s voice was calm and soothing with just a hint of concern coming through. “Can you hear me?”

Nate opened his eyes and saw Grandmother Tillman. Her mouth loosened into a smile. Nate was in her living room and could tell there were lots of people around him. He felt a soft touch as someone stroked his wrist. He looked over. It was his mother, and she was crying. He didn’t say anything, just stroked her hair. Somehow, it was enough.

He started to say “Old Redemption,” but choked up halfway through.

Grandmother Tillman mouth tightened. “I know, I know.”

A policeman in the room walked over to Nate. “Something woke your grandmother up and she saw you were gone. She called us. State troopers already had the woods staked out. Grub held up a state liquor store in Henderson, and they’d tracked him to the woods. They figured he was holed up somewhere in there. The dog must’ve followed you and Grub. That was some kind of dog.”

Nate looked at Grandmother Tillman. This time his voice didn’t choke up.

“He saved my life. Grub was ready to shoot me and Old Redemption saved my life. That bullet was meant for me.”

Grandmother Tillman bit her lip for a moment. “When you came to live here this summer, I asked Old Redemption to look after you, and he did.” She sighed. “It’s like he knew he owed me for that day on the bridge, and this was his way of paying me back. He was good to his name, all the way to the end.”

“That Hanley boy won’t be bothering nobody ever again,” a policeman chimed in. “He shot at the officers and they returned his fire. One got him square in the head. Killed him on the spot, deader’n than…” He paused, not able to come up with the right phrase.

But Nate saw the inevitable end of the phrase, “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s nigger,” an end that would restore what had been broken, bring to an end the Great Reformation, and restore Jim Frank’s place and the statue to its former iconic glory.

Grandmother Tillman saw it too and she stared instinctively at Nate to see what he was going to do. This great unspoken thing loomed between them. Everyone saw her staring at Nate and they stared at him too. It was like the dream where his grandfather sang, and everyone in the room looked at Nate.

“Deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish.”

No one made a sound, no face reacted. Everyone pondered what Nate had just said. Grandmother Tillman was the first to respond, with a slight arch of her eyebrows. She alone realized what Nate’s choices had been, and was proud of the one he made.

“Jim Frank don’t have no fish,” the policeman said and then looked to Henry for an explanation.

Henry responded with a slow grunt of approval. “Don’t get much deader ‘n that, then do you?” he responded.

This new phrase could come to smack of something, Henry thought. It would take awhile, but it had possibilities. The fact that there were no fish in Jim Frank’s pond, in fact, no pond for fish to even be in, gave it a curious dimension. You could say that the hopes for a fourth quarter comeback when the home football team was down forty-two to three were “deader ‘n Jim Frank’s fish,” meaning no worse now than when the score had been zero to zero at the start of the game. There never had been hope, just as there never had been fish in that dust pond.

Nate knew it was not as good as the other choice from an objective viewpoint of “smackiness.” But growing up sometimes means knowing when something is over and it’s time to walk away. At any rate, the new phrase would be good enough to earn Nate’s place back into Jim Frank’s on Saturdays. It also brought Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation to its successful conclusion. The job was complete.

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Nate sat on the porch the next day, packed and waiting for his parents to come pick him up, when Jim Frank’s old truck pulled up. He called to Grandmother Tillman and she came out.

“Why, what brings you over here?” she said pleasantly, but with genuine curiosity.

“I brought your dog back,” he said simply.

Grandmother Tillman smoothed down the front of her dress and walked over to the truck. Nate followed her. Old Redemption was laid out peacefully in the back.

“I’ll bury him for you, if you’ll tell me where.” Jim Frank was soft-spoken and respectful.

“Here, in the shade of this tree. It was his favorite spot.” Grandmother Tillman was crying softly.

After Jim Frank dug the hole, Nate helped him lower Old Redemption into it, and they covered him up. The three of them stood next to the grave. It reminded Nate of Maddie Flanagan’s funeral and he remembered the headstone someone had donated.

“Can we mark it somehow?” he said.

“Not a cross, though,” Grandmother Tillman said. “It wouldn’t be fitting to put a cross on a dog’s grave.”

Jim Frank smiled and dug a narrow slit along the top of the grave. He went back to the truck and returned with a rusty, metal circle. Nate recognized it right away. Even though Grandmother Tillman had never seen it before, she knew what it was, too. Jim Frank placed it in the slot at the head of the grave and tamped the dirt back around it, so it made an arc coming out of the ground.

“This here iron hoop’s finally come to rest after all these years,” Jim Frank said, with a final pat of his shovel. “And all that rode with it.”

Grandmother Tillman reached out and touched Jim Frank on the arm. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Jim Frank put the shovel in the back of his truck and drove away.

“I’ll plant an ivy at the base of that old hoop, it’ll look nice,” Grandmother Tillman said. She stood next to Nate and started to reach over and tussle his hair. At that moment, though, he looked so grown up to her that she stopped and put her arm through his instead.

“I’m going to miss having you around here, you know.”

Nate smiled. “Uncle Henry’s asked me to start going to Jim Frank’s with him again,” he said. “Not much new to see there, I could ask him to drop me off here some Saturdays instead.”

“I’d like that a lot.” Grandmother Tillman squeezed his arm and then turned and walked toward the house.

“I could pick us up some beer and cigarettes on my way.”

Grandmother Tillman laughed and softly muttered “Nurse!” as she walked back inside.

As Nate waited for his parents to arrive, he thought about his summer’s education—how wrong people’s images and reputations could be and how gifts like faith and love can be the most precious of all. And although the history of the world might be written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains as Grandmother Tillman had said, the history of everyday places like Davis Corners, he thought, was written in the small virtues and petty vices of simple men and women like his Uncle Henry, Maddie Flanagan, Washington, Miss Edna, and Doctor Lightcap.

And in Davis Corners, heroes smacked of the likes of Grandmother Tillman, whose house by the side of the road offered sanctuary to any in harm’s way—and Jim Frank, a junk man who saw value in everything.

The end.

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Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes