Heaven Should Fall

Chapter 26

Jill




A couple of weeks before the craft fair, Leela asked me to take her down to Henderson, south of where Cade worked, to buy supplies. Scooter, who had just come in the door from helping Dodge repair the rental house’s faulty dishwasher once again, asked if he could hitch a ride. Before I’d arrived in Frasier he’d had free use of Elias’s Jeep, and now he was reduced to bumming rides from all of us. I tried to be a good sport about it. He never complained about his circumstances, but I knew it was a tough life for him—reluctant to move too far from his grandparents’ nursing home, but unable to scrape together much of a living alone in this small town. He was lonely, and sometimes, watching him work with Dodge, I suspected he maintained the tenuous friendship more out of desperation than actual fellow feeling.

He was quiet for the whole ride down, tipping little puffed apple crackers into his palm for TJ to pick up one at a time. Glancing at him in the rearview mirror—at his impassive face, at the light that glinted off his glasses and obscured his eyes—I mused over whether I dared to ask him if he knew what, exactly, my husband was up to these days. Ever since his last trip to Maryland, Cade had begun hiding in the shed again, night after night. Just a day earlier, as I cleaned out his jeans pockets before doing the wash, I closed my hand around a dozen aluminum nails. I had stood there in front of the washing machine, staring at them in my palm, and wondered if I even wanted to know. My mother had always said that denial was the most powerful force after God, and I felt the undertow of it then, trying to drag the unnerving suspicions from my consciousness and tuck them away in a nice dark spot where they belonged. It was like the pull of sleep.

I dropped Leela off at the craft store, then rounded the corner and pulled up at the storefront for the mom-and-pop hardware store housed on the first floor of a crumbling Victorian building. Before he could get out, I said, “Come sit by me a second. I need to ask you something.”

Cooperatively—in his easy Scooter way—he climbed out and then back into the Jeep, settling into the passenger seat Leela had just vacated. I cut the engine and turned to face him, and he eyed me back warily.

“You remember when we painted the porch that day?” I began. “How you told me you were worried about Elias?”

He nodded.

“And it turned out you were right. And you came to me because you didn’t think the rest of the family was picking up on it.”

“I remember.”

“Well, now I’m coming to you. I’m worried about what’s going on with Cade. He promised me he wasn’t building bombs, and now he’s back in the shed again all the time. Just like after Elias died.”

He hesitated. “Did you look in the shed yourself?”

“He’s started using the padlock. I don’t know the code.”

Scooter shifted in the seat. He glanced back at TJ hammering against the seat back with the soles of his tiny sneakers. “He and Dodge have been talking a lot,” he said. “I think they’ve got something planned.”

His words should have come as no surprise, but I felt the squeeze in my chest even so. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. They talk about all kinds of things. Cade’s so pissed about Elias, and Dodge just feeds it and feeds it. I don’t even think Dodge feels that bad about what happened, truth be told. I think he just likes that he can puppet Cade by talking about it. But he still talks real big about how it was an injustice done to him and they need to settle the debt.”

“But what are they doing? What does that even mean?” I made a helpless sound, a humorless half laugh. “Should I grab my kid and run? Or what?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Olmsteads are never real clear on what they’re actually up to. Trust me, I hear stories from the Vogels.”

“Well, will you tell me if you do hear anything? Promise me you will.” He looked uneasy, and so I leaned in closer, dropped my voice. “I promise not to lay blame on you. And if you trusted me back then, I ought to be able to trust you now.”

He replied with a slow nod. Then he said, “If you need to get away from the house, go to the other Olmsteads. Randy and Lucia. You can trust them. They’re good people.”

I squinted at him in surprise. “How would you know?”

“They’re no strangers to me. I went to church with them growing up. I don’t see them too often now, but I know what kind of stock they are. They’re taking the blame for what the renters said to Dodge, and he’s spreading that around all over, and they don’t say a word in their own defense. It wasn’t them at all.”

“I know. Dodge is paranoid.”

“No, I mean, it was me. I got creeped out hearing all the remarks Dodge made about their daughter and I said something to them privately. I’m sure the other Olmsteads know it came from me, but they’re church people, they wouldn’t snitch on me about it. And of course Dodge thinks it’s Randy because he thinks everything’s Randy.” He cracked his knuckles one at a time, his gaze focused past my shoulder at the town scene around us. “The only reason I can trust you with all that is I’ve seen you can keep a secret. You’ve got integrity. I’m counting on you, same as you are on me.”

“What secret?”

“About Elias. That he didn’t love you like a sister-in-law. That time we were all working at the house, painting and whatnot, the way he looked at you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but Scooter shook his head. “A person would have had to’ve been an idiot not to see it. He took it to his grave, and you never stirred up contention over it. It was smart you kept that quiet. Candy didn’t like people who interfered with her brother too much.”

My voice seemed caught in the trap of his accusation. I looked away, and into the awkward silence he said, “Well, I’m going to go buy a hammer. You can pick Leela up and then swing back around to get me.”

The door slammed. After a moment I turned the key in the ignition and radio music filled the car: Alison Krauss, “Two Highways.” Beneath the notes of it I could almost hear Elias’s harmony, but I knew it was just a trick of my memory, filling in what we all had lost.

* * *

I dropped Leela off back at the house, then Scooter at the Vogels’, but from there I turned the Jeep east and kept on driving. A year ago, when Elias was struggling, I had considered calling Dave to ask his advice, but I shied away from doing so because I didn’t want to confess to an outsider that there was a problem in my family. Now it shamed me, the pride that had stopped me from seeking help. How many times had I heard my mother speak of the importance of humbling oneself and admitting when a situation had spiraled beyond one’s control? I owed it to her, and to Elias, not to make the same mistake twice.

I needed no map to find Randy’s place. As soon as I had read their address on the card Lucia had slipped in with the cookies, I knew it would be a place on the main highway just across the border in Maine. I’d guessed the house would be large, and I was right: it was a sprawling Cape Cod–style place, with a sloping second story on top of a ground floor sided in rough-hewn stone, attractive and not very old. From the porch a large American flag flapped in the April wind, and a sturdy wooden swing set in the front yard was crowded with shouting children. When I shut off the Jeep and opened my door, the children all turned to stare at me. Lucia leaned out of a window of the second story above the garage; after a moment she waved to me, then noisily clanged a bell attached to the siding. The children rushed back inside through the open garage door.

I unclipped TJ from his car seat and slammed the door, drawing a shaky breath. As I approached the house I could hear a woman’s voice calling to someone inside. In a moment the front door opened, and there stood Lucia in a blouse and long skirt, her hair arranged in a heavy braid that fell to the small of her back. “Jill Olmstead,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I can tell that’s Cade’s baby.”

She gestured me inside, and I stepped into the entryway. In the living room a woodstove blazed, and its gleaming light seemed to gild the camel-colored furniture and red rugs. It was a lovely house, tidy and clean and welcoming. A fresh scent of burning wood brightened the air. Photographs of the children hung from every wall. “Scooter told me it would be okay to talk to you,” I began.

“Of course it’s fine.”

“I was hoping I could speak to Randy. I want to talk to him about Cade.”

She led me into a large and open kitchen, where a tall man was rising from the table. His hair was dark, but his face was not unlike Cade’s: angular and handsome, though roughened by age and years of working in the sun. I said, “I came to see you because I have a concern about the family.”

“Do you, now.”

“I wouldn’t come to you if I had an idea of where else to go. Since Elias died things have been in sort of a downward spiral.” I forced myself to focus on the task at hand, not to allow my emotions to well. Randy Olmstead didn’t look like the sort of man who would appreciate a strange woman sniveling in his kitchen. “I thought they’d get better, but some people in the family aren’t dealing with their grief very well.”

“Scooter’s told us about that.”

I nodded. “Cade took it particularly hard. He’s angry. He was having a rough year even before it happened, so it’s that much worse after. And he takes Dodge so much more seriously these days, and you know Dodge. He’s—his ideas are—”

“He doesn’t always look at things from every angle.”

“That’s one way to put it.” TJ was squirming in my arms. Lucia scooped him up and carried him to another room, leaving me alone with Randy. I gnawed my lip, worrying over how much I should reveal. “Listen, Elias trusted you. I think Cade would, too, but he’s so angry—he needs somebody to talk him down, desperately. He seems 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.”

“Matthew or Mojo?”

My question was a serious one, but she replied with a tired laugh. “Matthew,” she said, “although Mojo, too, I suppose, dumb bird that he was. Ask for trouble and you’re sure to find it. That goes for the both of them.”

She shooed the hens and Ben Franklin into the henhouse, and we stepped through the gate to retrieve Mojo’s body. “Got to get him out before Old Ben gets to pecking him,” Leela said. “They develop a taste for blood real easy. Then he’ll be pecking at the hens and anybody who comes near.”

“That’s the last time I ever try to keep a second rooster. I should have killed him earlier like Candy said.”

“Nah.” Leela made threatening noises at Ben Franklin as I dragged Mojo out through the gate. “You meant well by it. Can’t nobody ever fault you for meaning well. And it’s Mojo’s fault in any case. He was the one always picking a fight. Old Ben’s just stronger and scrappier.”

The rooster was heavy. I stopped for a minute and set him on the grass. His long throat had been torn open by Ben’s savage talons, splattering the gray-and-white down of his beautiful Brahma coat with clotting blood. I had failed to desex him properly, failed to keep his fence in good repair. The signs had been in front of me the whole time, and I’d shrugged them off. My mother never would have.

Leela saw the tears I fought. In the most sympathetic voice, she said, “Don’t worry about it, Jill. It’s only their nature.”

“It’s my fault. I screwed it up.”

“Well, you didn’t mean to. You’ve had a lot on your shoulders lately. Can’t expect you to keep an eye on every last little thing.”

“Yeah, but I knew about it. I just didn’t bother to think it all the way through. Damn it.” I picked Mojo back up again by his feet and resumed my walk toward the trash pile.

“Nobody does every time,” said Leela. “You think it’s just you? Least you’re young. Take a look at my life sometime if you want to know about someone who can’t see the train coming.”

She was bent over picking up twigs and half-rotted leaves from the yard as she followed me, working around the trail of blood from Mojo. I said, “That’s not true.”

“It’s true enough. We do what we need to do to get by, Jill, especially when we’re busy and our choices aren’t many. You’ve got the will to speak up, at least. And the will to move on if it gets that bad.” She straightened and gave me a mild smile.

“Nothing would ever be so bad that I’d leave my family,” I told her. “Not Cade, and not the rest of you, either.”

“Life can get funny,” she said. “You never can be too sure about it. Any decision you make, I’d love you just the same. No matter who you leave or where you live.”

I stopped where I stood and turned to her, searching her eyes for meaning. And what I found, I couldn’t doubt: that she knew everything I knew, and that she loved me like a real mother does, without fear of loss or pain.