A Death On The Wolf, page 26
Peter Bong. Somehow I’d gone half the night and most of the morning without thinking about him and what had happened yesterday. That all changed a few minutes before ten o’clock when Sheriff Posey arrived. He wanted Frankie and me to go with him down to the river and tell him the whole story. Daddy went too. He rode up front and Frankie and I sat in the back of the sheriff’s cruiser, behind that steel grate that prevented prisoners in transport from getting to the sheriff or a deputy in the front seat.
Once we got to the bridge over the river I knew there was no chance we were going to find Peter Bong alive—or dead, for that matter. Sheriff Posey stopped on the bridge and we all got out. The waters of the Wolf were higher than I’d ever seen them and flowing in a tumultuous rush southward to Bay St. Louis. Even though we could not see the beach where I’d shot Peter Bong, I could tell from the swollen torrent twenty feet below us that it was completely submerged under the muddy water.
“Where’d it happen?” the sheriff asked.
I pointed to the bend in the river. “Our beach is about twenty yards the other side of that bend.”
“Take me down there,” Sheriff Posey said.
We left his cruiser on the bridge and walked down the side of the road until we got to the path down to our beach. We made it about ten yards into the woods, stepping over downed branches and small trees, before we could see there was no point in going any further. The Wolf had completely engulfed our beach and was well up into the woods.
“Our cabin is still there!” Frankie exclaimed and pointed.
I looked and sure enough, there it was. “That’s where he had Frankie tied up,” I said to the sheriff. I figured he’d want us to cut across and try to get to the cabin through the undergrowth, but he didn’t.
Sheriff Posey pointed down the path in the direction where our beach had been. “So down yonder is where you shot that jaybird?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“And he was trying to kill you with a knife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he was still laying there when you and Frankie left out of here?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff rubbed his hand over his chin. “You boys go on back up to the car,” he said. “I want to talk to Lem a minute.”
Frankie and I went back to the car and waited. As we stood their leaning on the bridge railing staring down at the angry water, Frankie said, “What do you think he’s gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was contemplating how they were going to drag the river with the water this high and moving this fast.
When Daddy and the sheriff got back to the car, Frankie and I were in for a not unwelcome surprise. The sheriff said he was not going to file any sort of report on this “incident.” He said, glancing sidelong at Daddy, that there was no evidence here of a shooting and, as far as he was concerned, none had occurred. Looking at Frankie and me, he added that if he ever got wind again of this “prank” that we had played on him by calling and making a false report, we’d be in big trouble. He pointed first to me and then to Frankie and said, “You don’t make false reports about something as serious as shooting somebody, you got that?” We both looked at each other and nodded our heads. “Good,” the sheriff said. “We’ll just consider this matter closed. And I mean closed, understand? I don’t ever want to hear anything about this again.”
“Yes, sir,” Frankie and I said in unison. We watched as Sheriff Posey and Daddy shook hands.
“I appreciate this, Brother Posey,” Daddy said.
The sheriff smiled and said, “You’ve got a good son, Lem…and his sidekick ain’t too bad, either.” He looked at Frankie and winked.
When we got back to Aunt Charity’s, there was another sheriff’s car in the driveway and a uniformed deputy was standing beside it. “Is your radio working, sir?” the deputy asked the sheriff as we got out of the car.
Sheriff Posey leaned back in the car and said, “Damn. I forgot to turn it on.” He stepped over to the deputy and said, “What’s up?”
“We got a mess down at the Thompson farm,” the deputy replied.
Frankie insisted on going with the sheriff to see what the situation was at his family’s home, but Sheriff Posey would not let him. He promised Frankie that as soon as he could, he would come back here and let us know what was going on. “Keep him here until I get back,” he told Daddy. At one o’clock the sheriff kept his promise and informed us that the Thompson Dairy Farm had been virtually destroyed by Camille and there was little of the house left standing. Evidently, Frank Thompson had not heeded any of the warnings and had not taken any precautions, like boarding up the windows to protect the house. As a result, Frankie’s mother and father, as well as his little brother, had all been severely injured in the storm and were en route by ambulance to the hospital up in Hattiesburg. Frankie took the news stoically, showing the same resiliency of spirit in a crisis I’d learned now was uniquely his.
The first task on Monday afternoon was to get all the plywood off the windows so we could get them open and get some ventilation in the house. Removing the boarding proved to be a lot more difficult and time consuming than nailing it up, and we didn’t finish until dinner time.
— — —
Tuesday morning uncle Rick showed up in a big white four wheel drive truck with NASA emblems on the doors. He had brought us a portable generator and two five gallon cans of gasoline to fuel it. The phones were still out, so Daddy had not been able to contact him or my grandmother. Uncle Rick had already been to Picayune and gotten Grandma Gody set up with a generator. He said her house was fine, and except for frazzled nerves, she had weathered the storm unscathed.
The generator was a blessing because Daddy had planned to drive to Hattiesburg that afternoon to buy dry ice for the chest freezer on our back porch in an attempt to save all the frozen meat and vegetables in it. The problem was the generator could only be hooked up to one house, and that clearly needed to be Aunt Charity’s since that’s where we were living. So we loaded the freezer into the back of Daddy’s pickup and brought it next door and put it in Aunt Charity’s garage. Uncle Rick said the generator wasn’t powerful enough to run the central air conditioning, but at least we could have fans, lights, and running water.
As a mechanical engineer, Uncle Rick took particular interest in the way Camille had merely moved our house off the foundation piers rather than completely obliterating it. He concluded that what saved the structure itself was Daddy boarding up all the windows. He said had the windows been unprotected, once they were broken, it would have allowed the wind to get inside the house, ripping it apart. Uncle Rick surmised that was exactly what had happened to Frankie’s house, based on what we told him about the damage there. My uncle told us one thing about his experience with Camille that we found amusing: He had stayed at MTF during the storm and Monday morning when he went outside in the parking lot of his office building, he found the wind had blown his Volkswagon over sixty feet and turned it upside down in the grass yard bordering the lot. He got a couple of the other guys who had weathered the storm there to help him roll the Bug back onto its wheels. Uncle Rick said it started right up and except for a dent in the roof was good as new.
My uncle was the first to bring us the news of the utter devastation along the coast. It was evident now the eye of Camille had come ashore at Pass Christian, and the destruction there was absolute. Estimates were coming in that the storm surge had been nearly 30 feet in places and the sustained winds at the eyewall were tornado strength: at least 200 miles per hour. Uncle Rick said, based on the damage he had seen in the Bells Ferry area, and the destruction of our farm, we had faced 165 mile an hour winds at the peak of the storm just before the eye passed over us.
Wednesday brought news from Sheriff Posey that Frankie’s father had died from the head injuries he sustained when their house was destroyed. Daddy drove Frankie up to the hospital in Hattiesburg to see his mother and brother. I didn’t really want to go, but Frankie asked me to, so I went. Given all that had transpired over the past few weeks with Frankie’s family, what we encountered should not have surprised us, but it did. It was a cold lesson in just how cruel people can be.
Frankie’s little brother was still in a coma, and we visited his room first. As we stood by Mark’s bed, I saw the first hint of emotion in Frankie since he had learned two days earlier of the tragedy that had befallen his family. Despite appearances to the contrary, I knew Frankie loved his little brother, and while I hadn’t given it much thought at the time, I suppose the weeks of being away from him, not being able to see him, had been difficult, though Frankie hadn’t said anything. Now, seeing him lying in that bed unconscious, his head bandaged and I.V. lines running into his veins, brought Frankie to tears. He kissed his brother on the forehead and said something in his ear before we left the room.
Frankie’s mother had a broken arm and a lot of cuts and bruises, but she was fully conscious and in possession of her faculties. Whatever hopes or illusions that I had regarding her love for her son, especially after she had come to our house that day with her entreaties to allow Frankie to return home, were forever laid to rest fifteen seconds after we set foot in her room. From the moment Frankie uttered the words “Hey, Mama,” she cut loose with such vitriol that it pretty much left us all shell-shocked. She blamed Frankie for his father’s death because he had not been home to help the family prepare for the storm. She blamed Daddy for keeping Frankie away from his family. She blamed me for her son being a “faggot,” which was my first clue that she shared her late husband’s sentiments about their son’s sexuality. My father had intended to ask her if she would like him to handle the funeral arrangements for Frankie’s dad, but after we had endured roughly three minutes of her unbridled wrath, Daddy motioned for us to leave, which we did without saying another word to Judy Thompson. Frankie did not attend his father’s funeral because no one bothered to tell us when or where it was.
Chapter 22
The Long Goodbye
Thursday we were in full recovery mode. Daddy had procured a chainsaw from a Brother at the Lodge (ours had disappeared with everything else in the barn) and we had begun the arduous task of cleaning up the front yards. Uncle Rick and Daddy had determined our house could not be saved; the damage to the framing and flooring was just too extensive. It would have to be demolished and a new house built.
By lunch time, after Frankie and I had carried more fifty pound pine logs than we could count to a pile in the yard on the south side of Aunt Charity’s house, Frankie finally asked me, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Mary Alice has to go back to Poplarville tomorrow,” I answered. With everything else that had befallen us, her imminent departure still managed to occupy my thoughts and affect my mood in the same way it had all summer when I had allowed it to consume me.
After lunch, Frankie told me to take Mary Alice for a ride. He said he and Daddy could handle the clean up for a while without me. Daddy was listening, since the three of us were sitting on the front porch, and I knew I needed his approval because there was still a lot of work to be done. With a single nod he gave it, so I headed back into the house to get Mary Alice.
As we rode down the road toward Bells Ferry, it felt good to be driving the GT Hawk again since I’d not been behind the wheel in nearly a week. I’d given all our vehicles a quick wash yesterday—even Daddy’s pickup—to get the leaves and wind-blown mud off, but now in the full glare of unshaded sunshine I could see my car needed a more thorough scrubbing. The day was hot and muggy, so we had all the windows down and the floor vents open. Mary Alice was wearing the same pink sun dress she’d had on the day I met her, and she looked just as pretty. The prospect of us being apart was making me fall in love with her all over again. Thus began our long goodbye.
This was the first time I had ventured out on my own since the hurricane, and as we approached the entrance to the Thompson farm, I decided to turn in and see the damage that Camille had done. The first thing I noticed was the grain silo was gone and the barn was nothing but a heap of splintered wood. The smell of dead animals was heavy in the air.
Mary Alice put her hands to her face and said, “Where are we?”
“This is Frankie’s dad’s farm,” I said. “It looks like the storm killed a lot of their cows.” The few cows we had in our pasture had survived the storm, but so far we’d only found three goats. Daddy figured the 165 mile an hour winds had literally blown the rest of them away. For all we knew, if they survived the ride, most of our goats were over in Hancock county grazing in someone’s yard.
Frankie’s house looked like a bomb had gone off inside it. It was easy to see why anyone in there would have been seriously hurt. The remnants of the house, and all its contents, were scattered in a streak 50 yards long, filling most of the backyard. As I turned the car around in the front yard, I caught a glimpse of a colored man in my rear view mirror. He was waving for me to stop. I did and he ran up and asked me if I knew where Mr. Frank was. I recognized him as one of the men Frankie’s dad had employed on the farm. I had to tell him that his boss was dead and I didn’t know what was to become of the dairy farm where he worked. He told me Frankie’s dad hadn’t paid him last Friday and he needed money, that his house had been badly damaged by the storm. I knew if he lived in one of those dilapidated shanties in colored town, it was a miracle that his home had merely been “damaged” and not destroyed. I pulled out my wallet and gave him all the money I had, $14. He thanked me profusely and told me he’d pay me back.
“That was nice of you to help that man,” Mary Alice said as we headed back down the drive to the road.
I didn’t say anything, partly because I didn’t believe I’d helped him all that much. What was $14 in the face of the destruction Camille had surely brought down on that man and his family? I wished I could have done more.
Main Street in Bells Ferry was busy. Most of the glass from the broken storefront windows that had not been boarded up was gone. And all the downed power lines that had littered the street had been removed. We’d seen the power crews working on that yesterday when we’d gone to Hattiesburg. Since I hadn’t seen or heard from Dick in nearly a week, I stopped by the station. Dick was there, out at the pumps filling up a car with gas. It took a minute for that to sink in and I pulled up beside him and yelled, “You’ve got power!”
“Just came on about ten minutes ago,” Dick said, looking over his shoulder at me. “Where the hell have you been? I was beginning to think the hurricane had blown you away.”
“Trying to clean up the mess,” I said. “How’re things at your house?”
“Lost a few shingles and a bunch of trees. Nothing major. You?”
“Aunt Charity’s house is fine. Our house got moved off the foundation. Daddy says we’re gonna have to tear it down and build a new one. And our barn is gone.”
Dick frowned. “That’s too bad. At least y’all are okay.”
“Is it okay if I don’t come back to work until next week? Daddy needs me to help him clean up the mess.”
“Yeah, I think I can handle things.”
I waved bye to Dick and we headed on out of town, taking 53 toward Poplarville, the very route I would be taking tomorrow to return Mary Alice to the Masonic home. When we got to the bridge over the Wolf River, I slowed and looked at the water. The level had receded, but was still up. I briefly thought about Peter Bong, but then pushed him out of my mind, trying to take to heart Sheriff Posey’s admonition that this matter was closed.
Mary Alice and I spent the next hour riding around, me looking at the damage Camille had done, and her listening to me describe it. Her brother had called us late yesterday evening, when our phone service was first restored, frantic with worry. Up in Jackson, they were getting all the TV pictures of the destruction in Pass Christian and Gulfport, and we had to assure Beau that while the damage in Bells Ferry was considerable, it was nothing like what he was seeing on his TV of the coast. Aunt Charity had called the Masonic Home to make sure everything was fine, and it was. They had weathered the storm with little damage in Poplarville and were looking forward to having Mary Alice back.
When we got back to the house, Mary Alice and I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the front porch. Our power had come on back when Dick had told me he had power at the station, and Aunt Charity had her central air conditioning cranked up full blast. Daddy and Frankie had abandoned the front yard for the cool sanctuary of the den where they were now watching TV. Aunt Charity was preparing dinner and my sister was trying her best to annoy me by refusing to leave the front porch and give Mary Alice and me some privacy. I had a déjà vu moment, thinking back to that day I’d fought with Frankie in the front yard and broken his nose. Sachet was being a pill that day, too.
After dinner, Mary Alice and I went for a walk. We didn’t talk, we just held hands. I found it curious that so much of this, our last full day together, had been spent just being together. Except for my descriptions of the hurricane damage during our ride, probably no more than two dozen words had been exchanged between us. I could sense that for the first time, the heartsoreness that had plagued me at times over the past several weeks whenever I contemplated this moment was now visiting Mary Alice. As such, we were both adrift in a sea of sadness where words seemed vapid and superfluous. A plaintive expression, a momentary gesture, a fleeting touch: these were all enough to convey thousands of words of emotion that crowded our hearts and rendered our eyes heavy with tears.
Late that night, long after Daddy had gone to bed since he had to work tomorrow and begin to help with the repairs at the plant, long after Sachet had ceased her annoyances and succumbed to the land of little girl dreams, long after Aunt Charity had finished her evening routine and retired to the inner sanctum of her bedroom, long after Frankie had fallen asleep in the bed beside mine with a comic book still in his hand, I crept from my own bed in a restless fit of anxiety and went to the den. I had no idea what time it was. I walked over to the sliding glass doors and opened the draperies and looked out into the star-filled night sky. The moon was bright, nearly three quarters full, and its cool luminescence seemed to sooth my troubled spirit. I stepped over to the sofa and lay down and before long, with the moonlight streaming across the room and touching my face, I at last found sleep.
