John Hart: Down River

Q: Gone where?

A: Just gone.

Q: Very well. How long have you been married to Mr. Chase?

A: Thirteen years.

Q: So, you’ve known the defendant for a long time.

A: Thirteen years.

Q: How old was the defendant when you and his father were married?

A: He was ten.

Q: And your other children?

A: They were five.

Q: Both of them?

A: They are twins.

Q: Oh. Right. Now, I know this must be difficult for you, testifying against your own stepson…

A: It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Q: You were close?

A: No. We’ve never been close.

Q: Um… Is that because he resented you? Because you’d taken his mother’s place?

Defense Counsel: Objection. Calls for speculation.

Q: Withdrawn.

A: She killed herself.

Q: I beg your pardon.

A: His mother killed herself.

Q: Um…

A: I’m no homewrecker.

Q: Okay…

A: I just want to be clear on that up front, before his lawyer tries to make this out like something it’s not. We were never close, that’s true, but we’re still family. I’m not making this up and I’m not out to get Adam. I have no agenda. I love his father more than anything. And I’ve tried with Adam. We just never got close. It’s that simple.

Q: Thank you, Mrs. Chase. I know that this is difficult for you. Tell us about the night that Gray Wilson was killed.

A: I saw what I saw.

Q: We’ll get to that. Tell us about the party.

I closed the transcript and replaced it on the shelf. I knew the words. The party had been at midsummer: my stepmother’s idea. A birthday party for the twins, their eighteenth. She’d hung lights in the trees, engaged the finest caterer, and brought a swing band up from Charleston. It started at four in the afternoon, ended at midnight; yet a few souls lingered. At two A.M., or so she swore, Gray Wilson walked down to the river. At roughly three, when all had left, I came up the hill, covered in the boy’s blood.

He was killed by a sharp-edged rock the size of a large man’s fist. They found it on the bank, next to a red-black stain in the dirt. They knew it was the murder weapon because it had the boy’s blood all over it and because it was a perfect match, in size and shape, for the hole in his skull. Somebody bashed in the back of his head, hit hard enough to drive bone shards deep into his brain. My stepmother claimed that it was me. She described it on the stand. The man she’d seen at three o’clock in the morning had on a red shirt and a black cap.

Same as me.

He walked like me. He looked like me.

She didn’t call the cops, she claimed, because she did not realize that the dark liquid on my hands and shirt was blood. She had no idea that a crime had been committed until the next morning when my father found the body halfway in the river. The way she told it, it wasn’t until later that she put it all together.

The jury debated for four days, then the gavel came down and I walked out. No motive. That’s what swung the vote. The prosecution put on a great show, but the case was built entirely on my stepmother’s testimony. It was a dark night. Whoever she saw, she saw from a distance. And I had no reason in the world to want Gray Wilson dead.

We barely knew each other.

I cleaned the kitchen, took a shower, and left a note for Robin on the kitchen table. I gave her my cell number and asked her to call when she finished her shift.

It was just after two when I finally turned onto the gravel drive of my father’s farm. I knew every inch of it, yet felt like an intruder, like the land itself knew that I’d surrendered my claim upon it. The fields still glistened from the rain, and mud filled the ditches that ran beside the drive. I steered past pastures full of cattle, through a neck of old forest, and then out into the soy fields. The road followed a fence line to the top of a rise, and as I crested the ridge I could see three hundred acres of soy spread out below me. Migrants were at work in the field, baking in the hot sun. I saw no supervisor, no farm truck; and that meant no water for the workers.

My father owned just north of fourteen hundred acres, one of the largest working farms left in central North Carolina. Its borders had not changed since the original purchase in 1789. I drove through soy fields and rolling pasture, crossed over swollen creeks, and passed the stables before I topped the last hill and saw the house. At one point it had been surprisingly small, a weathered old homestead; but the house I remembered from childhood was long gone. When my father remarried, his new wife brought different ideas with her, and the home now sprawled across the landscape. The front porch, however, was untouched, as I knew it would be. Two centuries of Chases had stood on that porch to watch the river, and I knew that my father would never allow it to be torn down or replaced. “Everybody has a line,” he’d said to me once, “and that porch is mine.”

There was a farm truck in the driveway. I parked next to it, saw the watercoolers in the back, their sides wet with condensation. I switched off the ignition, climbed out, and a million pieces of my old life coalesced around me. A slow, warm childhood and my mother’s bright smile. The things my father liked to teach me. The calluses that grew on my hands. Long days in the sun. Then the way things changed, my mother’s suicide, and the black months fading to gray as I fought through its aftershock. My father’s remarriage, new siblings, new challenges. Then Grace in the river. Adulthood and Robin. The plans we made all blown to bits.

I stepped onto the porch, stared over the river, and thought of my father. I wondered what was left of us, then went in search of him. His study stood empty and unchanged: pine floors, overflowing desk, tall bookshelves and piles of books on the floor next to them, muddy boots by the back door, pictures of hunting dogs long dead, shotguns next to the stone fireplace, jackets on hooks, hats; and a photograph of the two of us, taken nineteen years earlier, half a year after my mother died.

I’d lost twenty pounds in the months since we’d buried her. I’d barely spoken, barely slept, and he decided enough was enough and it was time to move on. Just like that. Let’s do something, he’d said. Let’s get out of the house. I did not even look up. For God’s sake, Adam…

He took me hunting on a bright, fall day. High, blue sky, leaves not yet turned. The deer came in the first hour, and it was unlike any deer I’d ever seen. Its coat shone pale white under antlers wide enough to carry a grown man. He was massive, and presented himself, head up, fifty yards out. He stared in our direction, then pawed the ground, as if impatient.

He was perfect.

But my father refused the shot. He lowered his rifle and I saw that tears brimmed in his eyes. He whispered to me that something had changed. He couldn’t do it. A white deer is a sign, he said, and I knew that he was talking about my mother. Yet, the animal hung in my sights, too. I bit down hard, let out half a breath, and I felt my father’s eyes. He shook his head once, mouthed the word, No.

I took the shot.

And missed.

My father lifted the rifle from my hands and put an arm over my shoulder. He squeezed hard and we sat like that for a long time. He thought that I’d chosen to miss, that in the last second I, too, had come to believe that life was more precious somehow, that my mother’s death had had this effect on both of us.

But that wasn’t it. Not even close.

I wanted to hurt that deer. I wanted it so badly my hands shook.

That’s what ruined the shot.

I looked again at the photograph. On the day it was taken, I was nine years old, my mother fresh in the ground. The old man thought we’d rounded the corner, that that day in the woods had been our first step, a sign of healing. But I knew nothing of signs or forgiveness. I barely knew who I was.