John Hart - Down River

I didn’t know if he was talking about the dogs or the people who wanted him to sell, men like Zebulon Faith and Gilley Rat. I wondered if new pressures were being brought to bear. Assault and murder. Dolf in jail. Debt ramping up. What forces now conspired against my father? Would he tell me if I asked, or was I just one more complication? He found his feet and steadied himself. His pants were wrinkled and muddy at the cuffs. His shirt hung out of his belt on one side. He twisted the cap back onto the bourbon and walked it over to the side bar. The day had put a new bend in his back and three decades onto the way he walked. He put the bottle down and dropped a hand around its neck. “I was just having a drink for Dolf.”

“Any word?”

“They won’t let me see him. Parks went back to Charlotte. Nothing he can do if Dolf won’t hire him.” He stopped by the side bar, and his pale whiskers caught that small, yellow light so perfectly that it could have been the only color left in the world.

“Has something changed?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Strange things can happen in the human heart, Adam. There’s power there to break a man. That’s all I know for certain.”

“Are we still talking about Dolf?”

He tried to pull himself together. “We’re just talking, son.” He looked up and straightened a framed photograph on the wall. It was of him and Dolf and Grace. She was maybe seven, teeth too large for her face, laughter all over her. He stared at her, and I knew.

“You told Grace, didn’t you?”

His breath leaked out. “She should hear it from someone who loves her.”

Sudden despair filled me. Dolf was all she had, and as tough as she pretended to be, she was still a kid. “How is she?”

He sniffed and shook his head. “As far from Grace as I’ve ever seen her.”

He tried to lean a hand on the side bar, but missed. He barely caught himself. For some reason, I thought of Miriam, and how she, too, tottered at the edge of some dark place. “Have you spoken to Miriam?” I asked.

He waved a hand. “I can’t talk to Miriam. I’ve tried, but we’re too different.”

“I’m worried about her,” I said.

“You don’t know anything about anything, Adam. It’s been five years.”

“I know that I’ve never seen you like this.”

Sudden strength infused his joints; pride, I suspected. It stood him up and put a copper flush on his face. “I’m still a long way from having to explain myself to you, son. A long goddamn way.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, the anger was mine. It was raw and laced with a sense of injustice. “This land has been in our family for more than two centuries.”

“You know that it has.”

“Passed down from generation to generation.”

“Damn right.”

“Then why did you give two hundred acres to Dolf?” I asked. “How about you explain that.”

“You know about that?”

“They’re saying it’s why he killed Danny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Owning that land gives Dolf a reason to want you to sell. If you sell, he can, too. Grantham thinks that maybe Dolf was killing cattle and burning buildings. Maybe even writing those threatening letters. He has six million reasons to do something like that. Danny worked the farm, too. If he caught Dolf working against you, then Dolf would have reason to kill him. It’s one of the theories they’re pursuing.”

His words slurred. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I know that, damn it. That’s not the point. I want to know why you gave that land to Dolf.”

The strength that had so suddenly filled him vanished. “He’s my best friend and he had nothing. He’s too good a man to have nothing. Do you really need to know anything more than that?” He lifted the glass and knocked back the last slug of bourbon. “I’m going to lie down,” he said.

“We’re not finished here.”

He didn’t answer. He left the room. I stood in the door to watch his back recede, and in the hushed splendor of the great house I felt the tremor of his foot on the bottom stair. Whatever grief my father suffered, it was his, and under normal circumstances, I would never intrude. But these times were far from normal. I sat at his desk and ran my hands across the old wood. It had come from England originally, and had been in my family for eight generations. I opened the top drawer.

There was plenty of clutter: mail, staples, junk. I looked for something small enough to be cupped in a large man’s palm. I found two things. The first was a beige sticky note. It sat atop the clutter. On it was a man’s name: Jacob Tarbutton. I knew him vaguely, a banker of some sort. I would never have considered it a possible source for my father’s anguish save for the numbers written below the name. Six hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Beneath it he’d scrawled first payment, and then a due date less than a week out. Recognition hit me with a twist of nausea. Rathburn was telling the truth. My father was in debt. And then I thought, with guilt, of the buyout he’d insisted upon when he’d driven me off the farm. Three million dollars, wired to a New York account the week after I’d left. Then I thought of Jamie’s vines, and of what Dolf had told me. Getting the vines in had taken millions more. He’d sacrificed producing crop to make it happen.

I thought that I finally understood, but then I found the second thing. It was in the very back, lost in the corner. My fingers discovered it almost by accident: stiff and square, with sharp corners and a texture like raw silk. I pulled it out, a photograph. It was old, backed with cardboard and curled at the edges. Faded. Washed-out. It showed a group of people standing in front of the house I’d known as a child. The old one. The small one. It filled the space behind the group with a simplicity that pulled at me. I looked away, studied the people that stood in front of it. My mother looked pale, in a dress of indeterminate color. She held her hands in a clench at her waist, and turned her face in profile to the camera. I touched her cheek with my finger. She looked so young, and I knew that the picture must have been taken shortly before her death.

My father stood beside her. Somewhere in his thirties or forties, he appeared broad and fit, with smooth features, a careful smile, and his hat tipped onto the back of his head. He’d laid a hand on my mother’s shoulder, as if to hold her up or to keep her in the picture. Dolf stood next to my father. He smiled broadly, hands on his hips. Unabashedly happy. A woman stood behind him, her face partially obscured by his shoulder. She was young, maybe twenty. She had pale hair, and I could see enough of her face to know that she was beautiful.

It was in the eyes that I saw it first.

Sarah Yates.

And her legs were perfect.

I put the photo back in the drawer and went upstairs to find my father. His door was closed, and I knocked. He did not answer so I tried the handle. Locked. The door was nine feet tall and solid. I knocked harder, and the voice that came back was shorn of emotion. “Go away, Adam.”

“We need to talk,” I said.

“I’m done talking.”

“Dad-”

“Leave me be, son.”

He did not say “please,” but I heard it nonetheless. Something was eating at him. Whether it was Grace, the debt, or Dolf’s hard fall, it didn’t really matter. He was forlorn. I left him alone and turned for the stairs. I saw the car coming when I passed the second window. I was in the drive, waiting, when Grantham stepped out.

“Are you here to tell me that you found Zebulon Faith?” I asked.

Grantham put a hand on the top of his car. He had on blue jeans, dusty cowboy boots, and a sweat-stained shirt. Wind riffled his thin hair. The same badge hung on his belt. “We’re still looking for him.”