“Yes, I’m here, Daddy, please, please hang on. Please.” Mark wept, trying to wipe the blood from his father’s cheek, chin, throat.
“Luh-love you, Mark,” Trey grunted. “Love you.” His head, raised to look into the face so much like his own, dropped to the cold kitchen floor.
And with those words, he died.
6
Mama sometimes said I didn’t have sense enough to come in from the rain. I was glad she didn’t see her grandson and me standing out in the easing mist that morning. I couldn’t leave Mark, not for one second, and I wasn’t about to ask him to go back into that house of death.
The paramedics had arrived, attempted their useless rituals, and pronounced Trey dead. We waited on the scraggly, unkempt front lawn. A fine veil of uncertain rain kissed our skins. Mark stared at his hands, his fingers daubed with his father’s blood. My daddy always kept a handkerchief in his pocket and I wished I’d picked up the habit. I tried wiping the blood off with the corner of my jacket, thinking: I must get Trey’s blood off him. I can’t leave his hands like this. Mark looked up at me from his gory palms, dark eyes welling with trembling tears.
“Why? Why?” he screamed. I hugged him hard to me and let him weep, feeling his heart pound through the thin fabric of his windbreaker. Trey told Mark he loved him instead of telling me who killed him. Did Trey even know who shot him?
I saw some of the Kinnards’ neighbors venturing out onto the lawns, drawn by the shrill siren of the ambulance and the police.
I don’t know how long I held Mark. Eventually his weeping subsided and he just took long, slow breaths. I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t know what to do. Where is the survival manual for this sort of horror? Sister, I thought. Mark needed Sister.
I heard the pang-pang of a bouncing basketball and looked up from Mark’s shoulder. Scott Kinnard stood there, holding a basketball and staring at us in the fine rain.
“What’s happened? Why are you here?” Scott asked me, glancing at the whirling lights atop the ambulance. “Where’s Trey?”
Mark pulled his face from my shoulder. The two boys looked blankly at each other. Scott whispered, “Are you Mark?” Mark just kept staring.
I tried. “Listen to me, Scott, you can’t go in there. Trey is-”
The basketball fell from Scott’s fingers, rolling on the rain-splattered pebble driveway. He blinked at me and ran for the house.
“Scott! Don’t!” I yelled, but he paid me no heed. He yanked open the screen door and barreled inside. I bit my lip; surely the police would escort him back out, and then I’d have two traumatized boys to deal with. I took a long, fortifying breath.
After a moment Junebug brought Scott outside. Where Mark had given a primal scream, Scott seemed choked into silence. He pressed his hands into his face, pushing his eyeglasses askew. Junebug gently guided him to the porch steps.
“That’s the boy he was living with, ain’t it?” Mark asked me in a dead voice.
“Yes. His name is Scott Kinnard.”
“He’s stupid looking,” Mark observed, watching the other boy begin to cry in short, staccato heaves. Junebug glanced over at me, a helpless look on his broad, unshaven face.
“I want to go home. Please, let’s go home,” Mark begged.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice-tentative, breathy, like a small child who’s just learned the words. I knelt by him and turned his face to mine. Blood decorated his cheek, like a swath of war paint, and I remembered Trey stroking his son’s face in those final awful moments.
Mark’s dark eyes were horribly vacant, retreating from death, looking inward for solace.
“Mark. Listen to me, son. We’ll go home, okay? But I think that, if you can, you should help me and tell Junebug everything we saw. So we can catch whoever-whoever did this to your daddy.”
Mark gaped at me as if I were speaking Finnish. I repeated myself and this time the words took hold.
“Okay, talk to the police,” he said, dragging the back of his hand across teary cheeks. “Just like on TV, right?”
“That’s right, Mark, just like on TV.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll be there, and your mom’ll be there. Okay? It’ll be all right.” I was babbling, I knew I couldn’t possibly be comforting to him, but I didn’t know what else to say. Jordan Poteet, he of the vaunted quick wit and sharp tongue, and I was as dulled as a rusty old potato knife. His hand closed on mine and I felt, sickeningly, the wetness of blood pressing between our palms.
I could see a garden hose entwined by the side steps that led from the house to the driveway. I stood and started to ease him toward the house. We’d just rinse the redness from our hands. The first step, I thought. The first step.
He refused to budge. His grip tightened, and his rain-cool fingers dug into mine. “No! No!”
“Okay,” I said. “Wait here. I’m just going to get the garden hose. I’m not leaving your sight.”
He nodded miserably. I turned and jogged to the coiled hose, turning it on, splashing my bloodstained hands underneath the cool cascade of water and rain. I watched the traces of Trey wash off my skin, staining the gray stones of the driveway. I pulled a length of hose to take over to Mark. That’s when I saw it and my heart really stopped beating for the day.
A nail stood slightly askew on the rickety bottom step, not driven quite home by a sloppy carpenter. A shred of fabric, a long triangle of thin colored cotton in a muted brown-and-green batik print, was tangled on the crooked nail, dangling like a flag of the defeated. It was just like a print on a pair of pants I’d given Sister a month ago for her birthday. She said they were the most comfortable britches she’d ever owned. I remembered her walking around the living room in delight, modeling them for an amused me and an indifferent Mama.
Before my mind could calculate all the terrible implications, my hand shot out, pulled the scrap free, and shoved it into my pocket. I got up and glanced over at Junebug; he was still trying to comfort Scott. I brought the gurgling water hose over to Mark and made him rinse his hands.
“Dad, Dad,” he whispered.
There was nothing to dry him with and I just let him sop his hands against my jacket. I needed to get him out of here. I needed to get out of here myself. I took a long, steadying breath, trying to calm myself. I couldn’t crack now; Mark needed me.
I steered him toward my Blazer. “Let’s go sit in the car.
He followed me without a backward glance at the house. I got him into the passenger side and shut the door. When Junebug came up behind me, I nearly hollered. My hand, still damp, automatically went into my pocket, shoving the scrap of cloth as far down as possible. Junebug gestured at Mark, who didn’t seem to notice us on the other side of the window.
“Can you get him to the station? Can y’all talk to us now while the details are still fresh?”
“Yes.” I turned to face my friend.
Junebug’s mouth thinned. “Good. I know it’s hard, Jordy. I’m so, so sorry.”
I looked past his shoulder. Scott Kinnard lay in a fetal position, still crying, his Dallas Cowboys windbreaker looking too small on even his slight frame. My heart ached for him, but I could only handle one devastated boy at a time. Mark had to be my priority. Later I’d call and check on Scott. One of the Kinnards’ neighbors, a kind-faced old woman in a quilted nightdress who’d been watching the proceedings from her porch, hurried over to Scott, talking to him softly, rubbing his back.
“What about Scott? Can you find Nola?” I asked.
“I’ll get hold of his mama somehow. We’ll take care of him.” Junebug glanced back at the huddled boy, still sobbing on the wooden porch. “God, if this ain’t a real sow’s nest. Shit.”
“What in hell’s going on, Junebug?” My voice, usually strong, direct, and a shade raspy, quavered. I’d kept it under steely control with Mark, but Mark was in the car, where he couldn’t hear me. Anger and fear and sadness rose up in me, hard and uncompromising. “Someone shot him. Someone shot Clevey. Why don’t you know what’s
