The Line

TWENTY-ONE


I was dreaming of Peter—his touch and the feel and scent of his skin—when I awoke to an unfamiliar sound. I tried to place it without opening my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I could take anything remotely similar to what I had encountered yesterday, so I refused to budge from beneath my covers. The sound repeated again and again, a rhythmic whack like someone felling a tree. Realizing that it wasn’t going to stop, I clambered out of bed and over to the window, opening it wide enough so that I could lean out. Oliver was down below, swinging an ax into what was left of our kitchen table, splintering it into so much kindling. He was shirtless and glistening from his exertions. I watched as he swung again, his muscles playing beneath his taut and flawless skin, the same skin that had been hanging from him in shreds only a few hours ago. Wearing running shorts and shoes, he looked like he was dressed for a marathon rather than a stint as a lumberjack, but then again, what do you wear to destroy a family heirloom that’s stained with your own blood? I leaned back in and closed the window.

I called Peter, but it went straight to voice mail, which meant that the supervisor of the building site must be on hand. I texted him a quick “I love you,” pushing aside the guilt I felt about Jackson, then brushed my teeth and pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of cutoff sweatpants. I was pretty sure that Aunt Iris was going to need help cleaning this morning. I had stumbled to bed without giving the carnage in the kitchen further thought, and I figured that the residue would be grizzly. When I got to the kitchen, the windows and the door were wide open. The air smelled of burned sage, but other than that it was bright and spotless. Not a single drop of blood. The room was completely empty of furniture, which indicated that the chairs must have gone on the chopping block along with the table. I went around to the back, where Oliver had stopped hacking up the table. He dropped bits of it into a large barrel, squirting them with lighter fluid before dropping in a match. The wood burst into flame like a sacrifice to some angry god.

“I was eighteen,” he said, although he hadn’t done anything to show that he’d acknowledged my presence. “You were a newborn, and we had recently lost your mama. I don’t say that as an excuse. I just want you to understand how long I’ve been living with my guilt over one stupid, angry decision.” I said nothing, but went and sat on the ground next to him.

“It was a different world back then,” he continued. “Not the kind of world where a football player could invite his boyfriend to homecoming.” He tossed a few more chunks of wood into the barrel. “This all has to be burned,” he said, nodding at the pile of wood that was all that was left of the table where I had grown up eating my breakfast. The chairs were already broken up and lying at the bottom of the pile. “My blood has soaked into it, and unless it’s burned, someone could use it to control me or steal my power. I’ll have to get a hold of the clothes Jackson was wearing and burn them too.” He surveyed the shards of broken furniture all around him. “Jilo would sell her soul for this pile,” he said.

I wondered again if Jilo had kept Grace from breaking through until I was safely out of the way. Could she have created the storm to slow me down? The lesson she gave me, being aware of danger and fending off attacks, would indeed have been appropriate if she had suspected I would get home before Grace was finished. Could Jilo have really intended to allow Grace to kill Oliver—or maybe even my entire family?

“Adam was never comfortable with being gay.” Oliver shifted gears again without warning. “He still isn’t, but it was much worse back then. He wanted to go into the military and then become a cop after his service was completed. Being gay didn’t fit into his plans at all. But then he made the mistake of falling in love with me, and I loved him right back.”

“Don’t be angry,” I had to say. “I don’t want to hurt you by saying this, but maybe you loved him so much that you—”

“That I ‘bent’ him?” Oliver’s laugh was bitter. “No, Gingersnap, Adam was plenty bent long before I laid eyes on him. Don’t let his butchness fool you. It’s the real knuckle draggers who can’t wait to get on their knees.” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. Oliver looked at me and tossed another bit of wood into the fire. “To make a long story short, I loved Adam. As a matter of fact he’s the only man I have ever loved, although now I am damned if I know why.” He stopped poking the fire and turned to meet my gaze. “Truth is, I will go to my grave loving him. Hell, I came pretty close to doing that last night.” The right side of his mouth edged up in an attempted smile, but it fell flat. “And now,” he continued, “I have to live the rest of my life seeing you look at me the same way he does.”

It was exactly what Jilo had hoped for when she’d mentioned Grace to me. “Tell me what happened,” I said, hoping against hope that I would find some extenuating circumstance that would allow me to pardon Oliver.

“You already know. Grace wasn’t lying,” he said.

“But you tell me. You tell me anyway.”

He moved away from the barrel and sat down next to me. He leaned back on his elbows as sweat beaded up and slid down his bare chest. “Grace said Adam and I were sick. Men weren’t supposed to be doing the things we did. Men shouldn’t love each other. She wanted Adam, and she figured she could fix whatever was broken in him.”

“Did she have Mother Jilo charm him?” I asked.

“There was no need. Adam and I had been together for over a year. He had grown a little bored with me by then anyway, I guess. He liked Grace’s attention; he was flattered by it. But mostly he believed the same things she believed. That there was something wrong with us. And when she promised to cure him, he went for it like the fire in that barrel is going after the wood. Problem is, it didn’t work.” He looked up at the blue sky and watched a large cumulus cloud move closer. “He came back after a few months, going on about how much he loved me, how much he missed me. He swore to me, swore to me, that we would be together somehow. And then a few days later he up and disappeared.

“I went to his house, but his mother told me to go away. Grace was pregnant, and she and Adam were going to get married. Her son didn’t have time for any more of our ‘little games.’ He was grown up, and he was going to be a man now. It was time for me to do the same. She slammed the door in my face, and then I saw the curtain in Adam’s window move. I knew he was there. I should have been angry. I should have walked away, but I was…”

“Heartbroken,” I said when he wasn’t able to find the word.

“No, darker than that. I was heartbroken, but my conscience was broken too. I sat down on their steps, and the darkness grew inside of me. I couldn’t move, and I felt like I was growing heavier and denser with each breath. After a few minutes, Adam’s grandfather Henry came out and sat next to me.” Oliver swiveled to look at me again. “Henry was the most decent man who ever walked this earth. He put his arm around me and told me that I needed to be tougher for my own good, but that I was going to get through it. And then he pulled me close and told me that his grandson was a fool not to love me like I deserved to be loved.”

“I met Henry once; he’s a good guy,” I said.

“But Henry died right after you were born.” Oliver started to shake his head, but then he sighed. “Savannah.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Henry was a spirit. He had held onto me, driven a car for me. Jilo must have lent some mojo to his apparition to make it capable of the physical feats he had performed. I should have been shocked, but it was getting hard to surprise me anymore. “Savannah,” I responded.

“Things would probably have worked out,” Oliver continued. “Sure, Adam would have married Grace, but I doubt it would have lasted. Probably in a year or two, he would have decided to move on from Grace as easily as he had moved on from me, proud of the fact that at least once, he’d managed to get his dick hard enough for a girl to plant a baby in her.” Anger simmered very close to the surface. “That kid would have been his cover for life.”

“Is that why—” I started to ask.

“No.” Oliver stopped me. “Winning wasn’t good enough for Grace. She had to come here to rub my nose in it. We fought, and I told her that the only reason Adam was marrying her was because she was knocked up. She said that Adam wanted a normal life, not a perverted one. I snapped and told her that if she was so sure of that, she should abort the baby and see if Adam was still interested in a wedding. I compelled her to have that abortion.”

“You were angry.” I found myself rationalizing for him. “They were just words.”

“So it wasn’t premeditated. It was still murder. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t care. Maybe the baby would have been more real to me if she had been showing. Maybe…” He paused. He’d obviously traveled this road many times. “She wasn’t a woman who decided what was right for her own body, Mercy. I decided for her, and there is no way to redeem what I did.”

“No,” I said. “I reckon there isn’t. But I don’t believe you truly intended for her to do what she did. I don’t believe you meant to compel her. I think you were grieving and angry. Maybe it was manslaughter, but I don’t believe it was intentional. You are not a murderer.” I stood and walked over to the fire barrel, where the wood was turning to ash. I tossed in a couple of extra pieces of the table.

“And I wonder if you’re too willing to turn a blind eye to the faults of those you love,” Oliver said.

“Come on and help me,” I said. “This is burning out.” He stood and dusted off his shorts. I bent down to grab another chunk of wood, and my hand touched a piece that was much smaller than rest—a splinter about the size of my palm. It was stained deep garnet with my uncle’s blood, like it had absorbed more than the rest. I picked it up and glanced at Oliver, who had turned and was reaching for one of the table’s legs. Without consciously understanding why, I slid the piece into my pocket and then returned to feeding the fire.

“Did Grace kill Ginny?” I asked after he poked the table leg into the fire. Sparks flew up and the heat of the fire combined with the heat of the day forced us a few feet away from the barrel.

“No. When Iris put her hand on Ginny’s body, she opened a door to the other side, and Grace stepped right in. She was just biding her time until she could break through.”

“Maybe Jilo killed Ginny to trick Iris into opening the door?” I asked, wondering if I had been duped into helping that happen.

“No one knew about my part in Grace’s suicide besides Jilo and Ginny,” Oliver replied. “Jilo used her granddaughter’s death as a negotiating tool. They made a pact, Ginny and Jilo. Jilo wouldn’t try to seek revenge if I agreed to move away from Savannah. That’s the reason I only come home a few weeks each year, and why I had to miss out on most of your childhood. The pact only allows me four weeks a year in Savannah. But getting rid of me was just icing on the cake.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jilo got her hands on a big chunk of power. I don’t know the mechanics of how it was done, but Ginny charged up a piece of quartz for her. About the size of my fist,” he said, holding up his hand to demonstrate. “It glowed bright enough to light a football field. I swear. I couldn’t even bear to look at it. Ginny told her to bury it where it couldn’t be found, and to use it carefully. I bet that rock has been powering her tricks for over twenty years now.” He grabbed another leg of the table and added it to the crackling pyre. “No, Jilo cares more for power than she ever did for Grace. She’s fat and happy, and she’d never do anything to risk the comfortable little setup she has around here.”

“So you don’t think she had anything to do with Ginny’s death?” I asked.

“No. I wondered at first, when her grandson Martell was spotted with the murder weapon, but the more I think about it, the more my gut tells me no.” He shook his head at me. “Nothing more concrete than that, just my intuition.”

I looked deeply into his blue eyes, trying to see the old Oliver, the one who Grace had unintentionally excised on our table. His confidence, maybe even callousness, had all but evaporated. I sensed that the Oliver I’d known was gone, and although part of me would miss him, I suspected that my uncle might become a better man now that he’d been freed of the secret he had been carrying all these years. “Will Jilo let you stay now that Ginny’s gone?”

“Fuck Jilo,” Oliver stated flatly. “And fuck any deals she made with Ginny. I’m not denying I’m guilty, but after last night, I think I’ve sure as hell served my sentence.” He grabbed the ax and punctuated his statement with a quick whack at a large chunk of the table.

“You seem to have this under control,” I said. “I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

“All right then,” he said, but as I started to leave, he called out after me. “Gingersnap, that wood you have in your pocket…” he said, and I felt the blood rush hot to my cheeks, as hot as the fire popping in the barrel. “No,” he said. “It’s okay; I’d say I owe you at least that much after last night. Just take it up to your room for now, and I’ll be up later to show you how to use it right. Don’t try anything till I’ve shown you, okay?”

“Yes,” I responded, my eyes dropping guiltily to the ground. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. I turned on my heel and fled through the kitchen door. I heard Oliver chuckling as he tossed another bit of wood into the can. His laughter sounded truly happy.