Jeff Abbott: Promises of Home

The next seven years might be long ones, I considered.

“Well, it is yours, Mark, and it’s a responsibility. The horse farm’s not just a home, it’s a business. A business that’s expensive to run.”

“I know. But there’s money to run it, isn’t there? To hire people to run it for us. I-I don’t want to sell it. I’d feel funny about selling the land that Daddy and Hart and Pa-paw Slocum are buried on.”

“Okay.” We hadn’t talked so frankly about his inheritance since Mark learned he was an unexpected legatee. “We don’t have to sell it.”

“Then let’s talk about the house.” He stopped for a moment, getting a better grip on the wreath he carried, and brushed his dark hair out of his eyes. For a second he was the image of his daddy, walking these fields and woods twenty years back. I didn’t want him to sell the land, either.

“We could live out here,” Mark suggested slowly. I didn’t answer for several seconds.

“Mama’s house is ours, too, Mark. Sister and I grew up there. I don’t know how I’d feel about moving here.”

“Couldn’t we give it a try? Mamaw might like it out here. And it’s nice in the country. We could ride whenever we want to. And Hart’s house-I mean my house-is bigger than our house.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I hate when teenagers are right. And wouldn’t it be a special challenge to live in a house that a teenager owned?

We stopped our discussion; our walk had taken us to the three graves that lay in the woods, a healthy distance above the creek. Louis in the middle, Trey on one side, and Hart on the other. Today would have been Hart’s birthday, and Sister had quietly suggested getting his grave a nice wreath. (Women always remember such kindnesses; men generally don’t.) Mark had pointed out that a wreath just on Hart’s marker would look odd, so we got big wreaths for his daddy and papaw as well.

Mark carefully placed a wreath on Hart’s tombstone, securing it into the ground so the gusty winds wouldn’t topple it. He helped me put the laurels on the other two graves. The stone markers felt icy cold against our fingers.

We stood together for several silent moments. Only the wind spoke: a low, gentle lament. Finally Mark asked, “Why’d Hart do it, Uncle Jordy? Why’d he the to save me? Why’d he leave me everything?”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, Hart cared about your granddaddy and your father, very much. And he cared about you, too. I think he felt bad for you that you didn’t have them around when you were growing up. And he didn’t have family to leave this to. So he left it to you.”

“But to die for me-”

I turned Mark to face me. “He wanted you to live very badly. That’s all that matters. I’ll… forever be grateful to him.” I turned my face into the cooling wind. Why did Hart live the way he did, in secretiveness and sadness? Why had he never given the town-or at least the people who cared about him-a chance to accept him as he was? I wondered how very, very different events might have been if Hart had thought his friends more generous-hearted. Or had we given him reason to fear our rejection, with unthinking jokes or comments or slurs?

Mark leaned down and gently touched the turned soil on the grave. It was a gesture of timid tenderness I’d seen him make on top of Mama’s head. “Happy birthday, Hart. Thank you for my life.” His voice broke and he stood, turning his face against my jacket. I watched the top of his dark head, then stared at Trey’s grave, my teeth clenching together.

We stood for a few more minutes, till the dropping temperatures ushered us toward the house. We walked back, my arm around Mark’s shoulders. The sun shone brightly as we went up the porch steps. Mark held the door for me as I went into his new house.

“Kind of funny,” Mark said, “never to have lived here.” He glanced back across the land and the big empty sky. “Because it feels like coming home.”