Heaven Should Fall

confused to me, like he doesn’t know how to honor his brother and also let go of what happened. And I’m worried that he’s going to do something—stupid. As a result.”

Randy tipped his head to the side a bit. The look he gave me was a measuring one. “What do you mean by ‘stupid’?”

“That he’s going to try to take revenge on somebody for Elias not getting enough help. Cade’s not a violent person, he really isn’t. But he’s… grandiose. And with Dodge in the mix, I don’t know what that could mean.” I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t understand people like this. You do. I can tell him all day long that he needs to deal with his feelings, but that means nothing to him. He’s a man, he’s an Olmstead—he’s Cade. You can talk to him in a way he’ll understand.”

Randy’s jaw shifted in a pondering way. Then he moved forward, and I stepped out of his path as he walked around the kitchen table to a brightly lit spot where a wooden rifle lay flat beneath a round, mounted hobby mirror. Beside it a wood-burning pen sat in its holder, the source of one note of the woodsy smell. Randy took his seat and pulled the mirror into place above the rifle stock. He rested his forearms against the table and looked up at me.

“What I say to you stays between you and me and the walls of this house,” he said. “You give me your word on that.”

“You have it. You have my word.”

He picked up the wood-burning pen and turned his attention to the rifle stock beneath the magnifier. From where I stood I could see he was burning in a picture of a deer leaping through trees and brush, with script curving above and below the image. A thin stream of smoke came up from the pen as he touched it to the wood.

“Those Olmsteads,” he began, “and I’ll count the Powells, too, for sake of discussion. For a long, long time now, they’ve been coming up with ways to justify things an ordinary man would have a hard time reconciling. For my own part, between you and me, I don’t know how you set down into a feud that divides your own family about some petty difference of opinion. Or how a grown man finds it in himself to take an interest in a fourteen-year-old girl, or how a father gives a blessing on that.”

“Candy was sixteen, wasn’t she?”

He blew against the wood. “He didn’t marry her until she was sixteen, and I don’t suppose they consummated it until then, because she’s a Christian girl. But it was wrong just the same. I didn’t hold with him even giving that thought an audience in his mind. And when you look at how it corrupted her, you can’t help but lay that blame on her father’s shoulders, as well. A girl that age ought to be thinking about how she can grow up to be a worthy young lady, not how she can gratify some grown man’s appetites.”

“Corrupted her?”

He looked up fleetingly from his work, but I caught the grimness of his gaze. “I’m referring to the accident at the lake. You can make of that what you will.” He shifted the rifle beneath the magnifier. “My heart goes out to my sister-in-law in all she’s suffered. Leela raised those children as best she could. I believe in the traditional family, but there wasn’t a day that went by when those children were young that it didn’t cross my mind how much better off they’d be if my brother had a hunting accident.”

My eyes widened, and the gaze he cast on me was challenging. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I never knew Eddy then.”

“You knew Elias, so you knew Eddy. Elias was what happens when the Lord makes a fine young soul and entrusts it to the likes of Eddy Olmstead.”

I watched as he pressed the tip of the pen to the engraving of a tree, buzzing it over all the little leaves. Then he set down the pen and pushed the magnifier to the side. “But you came here to talk about Cade. I can offer you shelter for you and your son. You’re as welcome here as any of the children of my blood. But if Cade wants to speak to me, he’ll have to approach me on his own. Coax him into coming to me if you like, but I can’t go chasing him down.”

“All right,” I said. But my throat felt tense with frustration, and in rapid speech I continued, “But what if he won’t listen to me? Won’t you call him, at least? He’s a good person, really he is. He’s just grieving, and his grief has gotten the better of him. He listens to all the stupid stuff Dodge says and it’s like he’s lost his perspective. If he could just be snapped back in line by somebody he respects—”

“I have no reason to think he respects me.”

“I know he will. He’s so angry, that’s all, and he won’t listen to reason from me. He’s only twenty-two, Randy. He needs a father figure to lay down the law for him. He’ll listen, if you speak to his conscience.”

“He’s a grown man old enough to have a child and old enough to make his own calls about things, for good or for evil. And as much as you may not like it, this may be his conscience. Maybe the truth is he’s not as different from Dodge as you’d hoped, and if that proves true, Lord knows there’s not a thing that can be done for him.” He set down his tools and came around the table to stand before me. “I have a guest room in the basement with its own bath. You’re welcome anytime you need it, and you might. You can take it right now if you like.”

Without warning, tears began trickling down my face. “I can’t do that. I’m not going to leave him just because he’s grieving. I’d never do that to him.”

“That’s fine. But if the day ever comes that you decide his son is paying too dear a price for his father’s grief, the offer stands.”

I nodded and scrubbed my cheek with my sleeve, and Randy laid his big hand on my shoulder.

* * *

Once I got home from Randy’s, I put TJ straight down for a nap and lay down on the bed in the dark room, watching him squirm in the laundry basket. The exhaustion I felt was bone deep; my mind, more than any other part of me, demanded rest. I needed time to think about all that Scooter and Randy had said, time to mull over how I would move forward from here, what I would say to Cade or demand of him. But in my current state, every thought popped like a bubble as soon as it rose to the surface of my mind.

I closed my eyes and let the peace of my weariness overtake me. Yet not more than a few minutes passed before I heard rapid footsteps on the attic stairs and then Leela’s voice, sharp and sure. “Outside, Jill,” she ordered. “Candy, Jill, outside!”

I bolted from the bed and hurried to follow her. She was hustling down the staircase ahead of me, her magnifying lens bouncing against her chest and her skirt bunched up in one hand. She shouted Candy’s name again, but her daughter wasn’t to be found. As we passed through the screened porch I heard a frantic rustling outside, a fluttery, broken noise accompanied by the noisy squawking of chickens. Leela rushed over to the side of the shed and turned on the garden hose. It had an old-style nozzle on its end, and water gushed out in uneven bursts as she ran with it toward the chicken coop. At first glance the swirl of wings was both green and white, but just before the water hit the birds the white ones wilted down. Ben Franklin’s powerful wings beat the air hard, and then he squawked indignantly, strutting backward from Mojo’s wet and docile corpse.

“You get back from there,” Leela barked at him. “You blasted bird.”

In the excitement Candy had emerged from the Powell house, her home-sewn dress protected by an apron spattered with paint. She peered around me and Leela to better see the chicken enclosure, then uttered a sharp laugh. “Old Ben finally did it,” she said. “I told you that other one still had his balls.”

I steeled Candy with a look. “I messed it up. That’s why he’s supposed to be in his own enclosure.”

“Chewed right through his own enclosure, looks like,” she observed, making sure to mimic my tone and accent. And I saw she was right—the wire had been picked apart at the base where it connected to the wood frame, allowing Mojo to squeeze through onto Ben Franklin’s side. I supposed he was after the hens.

“Well, let’s get him out and trash him,” Candy said. “He’s no good to eat, after all.”

High above our heads, a strident little voice rang out. “Who goes there!”

We all looked up, and I caught sight of Matthew standing at an attic window with his rifle pointed at me. “Matthew!” Leela scolded. “You put that away!”

“Give me liberty or give me death!” he shouted. “No king but King Jesus!”

“Matthew!”

He ducked out of the window, no doubt inspired by the expression on his mother’s face, but his little eyes reappeared just below in the venting slats for the attic fan. As Candy headed into the house to corner him, Leela said, “I pity him.”