Pa pulled himself together, sluggishly. He shut his eyes and his chin began to lower to his chest. It stayed there for a while. Shad rapped the chessboard with his knuckles, careful not to jostle the pieces. His father opened his eyes.
“I tried not to get nervous that afternoon,” Pa said. “I thought maybe she went off with that Luvell girl. Malt shop, the junior rodeo over there in Springfield. However they keep busy. You know your sister was a good girl, she doesn’t do what them others all do. When it came evening I made some phone calls but nobody’s seen her. Come ten o’clock I called the sheriff’s office. She’d never been out past that without telling me before. That damn Increase Wintel didn’t pay me no heed, but Dave Fox went off looking right then. He found her the next morning.”
Leaning closer, Shad remained poised, but his father had hit the wall again.
“And what happened to her?”
“Nobody’s sure. She just… went to sleep there on Gospel Trail Road.”
“That’s not what you told me.”
“Yes it is, boy.”
“You said-”
“I know what I said. I told you the truth is what I did.”
His father’s voice had cracked painfully when he’d phoned the prison over a month ago. It was the only call Shad ever received on the inside. He knew it was going to be awful the instant he touched the receiver. Pa had said exactly thirteen words and hung up before Shad could respond.
Pa couldn’t see the disparity of what he’d said on the phone and what he was saying now. Shad had to let it go.
He chewed his tongue, kept staring into darkness. “There’s nothing up that way at all. Gospel Trail leads to the trestle, doesn’t it? Why was she near the gorge?”
“I ain’t got no answers.”
“But what did she die from?”
“I don’t know that either. They never found out. Doc Bollar ain’t a big-city medical examiner. All he told me was her heart stopped. How’s that for putting a father’s mind at rest? That bastard!”
Mags had just turned seventeen. He searched Pa’s face to see if the old man was hiding anything, but there was only the usual frustration in his features, the endless disappointment.
“It’s a bad road, son.”
The words, spoken as if they held a terrible meaning. “What’s that?”
“I told you kids to keep off it, didn’t I?”
“The road? When did you ever tell me to stay clear of it?”
“Since you were both children!” The veins on his father’s wiry forearms stood out, the thick muscles in his neck corded and going red. “Not to go up there on Gospel Trail! It’s a bad road! Didn’t I say that?”
“Did you?”
“Stay away from Jonah Ridge! There’s nothing there but murder in wait. Don’t neither of you ever listen to me?”
Now that Shad thought about it some, he realized that he’d never been up there to the top of the gorge in his life. His father had told him, many times, but Shad didn’t stay away because of that. He simply never had a reason to go into those hills. And neither had Megan, so far as he knew.
“Tell me what you mean by that.”
“Don’t you know yet, boy?”
“No. Why would there be murder waiting?”
“I can’t explain it no better.”
His father stood, with that coiled explosive force inside him about to propel him forward. Shad reached out and took his father by the shoulders, held the old man where he was. They both began to tremble, fighting one another like that, will against will. Shad understood that his father was no longer going to be of any help. Whatever had to be done, he had to do himself.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“Don’t talk such damn nonsense!”
“It’ll be okay.”
The pressure inside Pa suddenly eased. He deflated and slumped back into his chair, weakly started to rock again. The dog began to crawl around in circles. Shad patted his father’s back, rubbing him, like,
“Have you told Tandy Mae?” he asked. Shad didn’t feel comfortable bringing it up, but had to do so.
“I got no truck with her anymore, son.”
“She’s Megan’s mother.”
“That isn’t much of a truth to tell. Tandy gave birth to her, that’s all. ’Sides, she got enough worries with them other lame and afflicted children. Every one of us got enough burden already, don’t you think?”
When you got down to it, when somebody put it like that, you couldn’t do anything but agree. Shad nodded. “Yes.”
“You gonna stay the night?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think you would, but you’re welcome to stay, a’course. Your old bedroom’s still fixed up. Megan always cleaned it, put clean sheets on while you were away.”
His father’s steady motion began to waver. As if he consciously forced himself to keep going but kept forgetting, from second to second, what he was supposed to be doing.
Shad started to turn. His father was instantly on him, an inch away and hovering. “Son-”
“I want to see her room.”
“There isn’t anything left that might help you.”
“Show me.”
“It’s gonna do nothing but kill you, if’n you stay.”
Everyone thinking he didn’t have a chance, that he was already dead.
“What is?”
“The hollow.”
Shad spoke gently now, softly, the way you had to talk to Tandy Mae’s hydrocephalic pumpkin-headed son. “Pa, you wanted me to come home. Now I’m here. I want to check her room.”
The hound rose slowly and stood at Shad’s knee as he pulled open the screen door and pressed inside.
Immediately he could feel the oppression of common failure and everyday defeat. You could smell it like the stink of terror. Anybody who had it on him in prison was finished by the end of the first week.
You didn’t have to be murdered to haunt a house. And the place didn’t have to do anything more than exist to harass you. He wondered why he’d never felt it in his cell, with a century of caged men’s energy imprisoned along with him. No, only here, surrounded by family.
He entered Mags’s room and stopped short. All her belongings were still in their appropriate spots-the schoolbooks and teen magazines stacked neatly on her desk, closet door open and her clothes draped on hangers and hooks. Shad gritted his teeth and almost glanced away.
“You didn’t touch anything.”
“I couldn’t.”
“That’s not like you. She’s been dead six weeks.” About twenty minutes after Tandy Mae had taken up with her cousin, Pa had cleared every remnant of the woman from the house. Whatever she didn’t take, he burned in a bin out back.
His father shrugged, appeared almost sheepish. Was it because he’d lost yet another woman in his life? Or had he finally learned that removing the effects didn’t push out any of the memories?
“Five and a half,” Pa said.
“Did the police show up here?”
“Sheriff Wintel never came around at all, not even to offer his commiseration and condolences. Dave Fox searched through her things. Wore a pair of latex gloves the whole time. He inspected different parts a’the house,
