Lee Martin - Late One Night

In the swirl of all the talk that followed Captain’s confession, that was the one indisputable fact — he hadn’t intended to set that trailer on fire.

“I didn’t know anyone was in there,” Shooter said again and again when he told his story. “I thought Della had taken the kids to her folks’ house.”

After Ray Biggs had Captain’s story, he went back to the courthouse, and one more time he sat across the table from Ronnie in the interrogation room, and he questioned him again about the events of the night the trailer burned.

“Tell it to me again, Ronnie,” Biggs said. “Take your time.”

So Ronnie went through it all — the gas can, Wesley Rowe, the goats, patching the hole in the siding with a strip from his T-shirt, the trip back to town, taking off the T-shirt and stuffing it under the passenger seat before going on to Brandi’s house and getting into bed.

“I didn’t want her to see that shirt, torn up like that. I was afraid if she saw it and asked what happened, I’d tell her everything. I didn’t know how to tell her I’d gone to Della’s meaning to burn the trailer.” He bowed his head and didn’t say a word for a good while. Then in a voice he was straining to hold steady, he said, “Then Pat Wade came with the news. He came to tell me—”

He couldn’t go on, and Biggs took pity on him. “It was the boy.” He told Ronnie about Captain and the lit match. “He wouldn’t say that you poured that gas. Guess he was trying to keep that a secret. But we know you did, now don’t we?”

Ronnie nodded, choking back the thickness in his throat that came to him when he thought of how Captain had done his best to protect him. He thought how there were two kinds of people in the world. There were people like Captain, and then there were people like him. There were people who were faithful, and there were people who weren’t. “I patched that hole in the siding.” Ronnie’s eyes were wet. “I could do that much for my family, and that’s what I did.”

“You know that boy’s not to blame for this,” Biggs said. “But you? Even though you didn’t do what you went out there to do, you still had the intent, a criminal intent, and you poured that gas, and then you walked away.” He let Ronnie think about that a while. “You understand what I’m saying? Four people are dead because you did what you did. That’s reckless homicide, Ronnie. That’s exactly what that is.”

“I’d go back and change it if I could.”

The next day, Biggs carried the story to Lois and Wayne Best, and when Lois had heard all there was to hear, she asked Biggs if he could drive her over to the Rowes’. She had things she needed to say.

Biggs brought her to Shooter’s house in his patrol car. She walked into that house, her back bent from her years of trying to move forward through the world, her worn-out knee balky but her head lifted and her eyes set straight ahead.

She didn’t bother to take off her coat or to accept Shooter’s offer of a chair.

“Ma’am,” he finally said. He hadn’t shaved — had barely slept, Biggs would wager — and now he looked wrung out and ready to pin to the line. “My boy, he didn’t mean any harm.”

Lois drew herself up as straight as she could. “I know what it is to have a child. Della knew that too. She did everything to make sure her kids were loved and safe. Put up with Ronnie’s mess, cleaned other people’s houses nearly every day of her life. We all did what we could for those kids.”

Shooter rubbed his hand over his face. He looked so scared and lost. “I keep worrying over what’s going to happen to Wesley. You know how some of the kids make fun of him.”

“Where is he?” Lois asked. “Is he here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shooter said. “I kept him out of school today. I figured the talk would be making its way around. He’s back there in his room.”

“I want to see him, please.” Lois pointed down the hall. “This way?”

“First door on your left.”

Shooter took a few steps ahead of her before Lois stopped him by grabbing onto his arm. “I’d like to be alone with him, please. Just the two of us. Just him and me.”

“Well—” Shooter glanced at Biggs, looking for a sign of what he should do, and Biggs gave him a nod. “I guess that’d be all right.” He stepped aside so Lois could move past him. “Yes, ma’am.”

She tapped on the closed door with her knuckles. “Honey?” she said. “It’s just Lois. You know me. I want to make sure you’re all right.”

When no answer came, she turned the knob and opened the door a crack. “I’m going to come in, honey. Is that all right?”

Captain’s voice seemed to come from somewhere very far away, just a mumble, saying, “You won’t yell at me?”

“Oh, honey. Don’t you worry now.”

He was sitting up in bed, a quilt over his legs, and Lois recognized that quilt right away. She knew it was one his mother had made after she got sick, working on it little by little as she felt up to it. It was a pattern called Heart after Heart —five rows of four hearts each, all pieced and appliquéd. “I want to do this for Wesley,” she told Lois once when she came to visit. “I want him to know that I might be gone, but my heart will always be part of his.”

Looking at it now, Lois knew the patience Merlene needed to do the hearts in all different shades of red and then frame them with a reddish-brown border. Lois could imagine her hoping that time would hold out until she finished, knowing she’d done everything she could for Wesley and now there was only this — this quilt to remind him of all the love they’d shared. Maybe in some small way, whenever he felt sad or afraid or alone, he’d be able to look at that quilt and think of her.

He was rubbing his hand gently over one of the hearts now.

“You miss your mother, don’t you?” Lois said to him.

“She wouldn’t like what I did.”

Lois sat down on the edge of the bed. “No, she probably wouldn’t, but she’d forgive you. I have absolutely no doubt about that.”

Captain looked at her. “She would?”

“Yes, she would. She loved you for you. No matter what, you were her son.” Lois scooted closer to him and held her arms open. “Come on,” she said. “Let me hug you.”

She sat there a good while, letting him press his face into her neck, patting his back while he sobbed, telling him over and over, “Hush, now. Hush. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Finally, once Captain had cried himself out, Lois asked him if he’d eaten anything.

“Not since lunch yesterday.”

“Lordy, you must be starving. Get dressed. I’m going to make something for you.” He looked at her, hesitating. “There’s only one thing to do when trouble comes,” she said. “I know it for a fact. Get out of bed every morning. Keep moving ahead.”

She went back to the living room, where Biggs and Shooter were still standing. Shooter was leaning against the wall, his head bowed. He was rubbing the back of his neck. Biggs had his hat in his hand, turning it around by its brim.

Lois said to Biggs in a soft voice, as if it were only the two of them in the room, “Our baby’s gone, and her babies, too, and nothing’s going to change that. Wesley Rowe? He’s still alive. I don’t want any hurt to come to him.”

Not everyone was willing to overlook Captain’s part in the fire. Even though it was generally known that Ronnie had gone to the trailer with the intent to burn it, had spread that gas before having a change of heart and driving away, there were still folks who couldn’t get beyond the fact that if Captain, a boy who wasn’t right from the get-go, had been home in his bed as he should have been that night and not out there striking matches, Della and her three children would still be alive. Too many people had invested too much in the suspicion that Ronnie set the fire, and even though he was the one who’d pay the price, they couldn’t help but spread the blame to Captain as well.