Shadow in Serenity

sixteen


Why do people have to die?”

Carny finished tying the knot in her son’s tie and looked into his freckled face. Usually, she had a ready-made, carefully thought-out answer to these profound questions, but today she was at a loss. “I don’t know, Jason. Maybe Slade had finished doing whatever God meant for him to do.”

“Will he go to heaven?”

“I’m sure,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “He was a strong Christian. He loved Jesus and showed it every day.”

“Do you think Logan will be at the funeral?”

The question seemed to come from left field, and Carny stood up and got her purse. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Just wondered.” He looked quietly at her, then said, “Mom, you look real pretty.”

“Thanks, honey,” she said, bending to kiss his forehead. “But I don’t think black is my color.”

“You look pretty in any color,” he said. “Logan thinks so too.”

Frowning, she turned back to him. “Logan? When did he tell you that?”

Jason hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe at church. No, it was at the dance. That must have been when.”

The way he answered alerted her that something wasn’t quite right, but they were going to be late, so she let it go. She was just about to ask him what else Logan had said, when Jason pulled another question out of thin air.

“Can we have Jack?”

Getting in the truck, she shot him a look. “I don’t think so, honey. We have enough animals, and he’s used to living inside. Besides, I think Betsy’s family will probably take Jack in.”

“Poor dog,” Jason said, gazing out the window. She blinked back the tears misting in her eyes and tried to concentrate on getting to the church.

After the service had started, when Carny had almost given up on Logan’s attending the funeral, he walked into the church, head down and shoulders slumped. She saw him slip into the back pew and look toward the coffin at the front of the church. Jack lay curled next to it, still unwilling to leave his master’s side. The other mourners had told Carny how Betsy’d tried to get Jack out of the church for the funeral, but he’d growled at her, so she’d left him alone.

Carny couldn’t help playing the facts over in her mind. Had she been wrong about Logan? Would he really have given back a check for a hundred thousand dollars if he were, indeed, a con artist? She couldn’t imagine a scenario in which her father, no matter how attached he got to someone, would give back a hundred grand.

Logan had seemed truly shaken by Slade’s death, and the tears she’d seen in his eyes when he’d stood at the coffin had been real. She knew she wasn’t wrong about that. But she’d been sure she wasn’t wrong about his being a fraud, either. Now she was just confused.

Jason snuggled closer, leaning his head against her as dear old friends stood and told stories about Slade. The barber would have enjoyed it. It was a shame that people waited until you were gone to say good things about you.

When the service ended, the crowd spilled from the church and headed to the small cemetery next door, where all the members of the congregation were buried when they died.

Carny saw Logan slip out of the crowd and hang on the outskirts, waiting for everyone to go by. Something about his forlorn posture moved her, and quietly, she went toward him. “You okay, Brisco?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Are you coming?”

Logan turned as the church’s side door opened and the pallbearers brought out the coffin. Jack followed them.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

Jason reached up for his hand, and Logan hesitated, then took it. Together, the three of them walked to the grave site.


Logan kept his eyes on Jack as he followed the casket to the tent set up over the freshly dug grave.

Jack whimpered as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave. He lay with his chin on the dirt, his eyes trained on the coffin, until the closing prayer came to an end and the crowd broke up. Logan couldn’t have said why that sight touched him so, but an unspeakable despair, rooted deep in his heart, came over him. Struggling with the tears that were so foreign to him, Logan let go of Jason’s hand and went to the dog.

Stooping, he said, “It’ll be all right, boy.” He scratched behind the dog’s floppy ear, and Jack looked up at him with moist, soulful eyes. Logan stayed there, stroking Jack and talking softly to him, until the last of the guests had offered condolences to Betsy and her family and only a few stragglers remained behind. Among them were Jason and Carny, who offered to take Betsy’s children for the night so she could rest.

“No, I think it would be better if they were home,” Betsy was saying. “But I appreciate it, Carny. I really do.” Wiping her eyes, she turned to Logan, sitting beside the dog.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get him away from here,” she said. “He almost bit me earlier. And we can’t keep him. John’s allergic to dogs.”

Logan didn’t stop his reassuring stroking as he asked, “What are your options?”

“Honestly,” Betsy said, “we’re considering having him put to sleep. He’s old, and he was so attached to Daddy …”

Logan stood up. “He’s not that old. He’s just confused right now, Betsy. He doesn’t understand.”

“I realize that,” she said, “but we can’t just let him hang around in the graveyard. I honestly don’t know what else to do.”

Logan looked down at the dog, who still gazed down at the coffin. “I’ll take him,” he said.

“What?” Betsy’s eyes lit up. “You would do that?”

He glanced from Betsy to Carny, who looked even more confused than she had when he’d given back the money. “Yes,” he said. “Jack seems to like me. And I’ve always wanted a dog.”

Carny’s eyes narrowed. “Logan, are you sure? You’re not exactly set up for a dog.”

And what’ll you do with Jack when you skip town? Logan asked himself. But that didn’t seem to matter right now. There were times in a person’s life when logic had to be overruled. This was one of them.

“Jack’s easy to take care of,” he said. “He’s housebroken, polite, and he’ll just go with me everywhere I go. Like he did with Slade.”

But that dog will undermine everything you need to do, young man! he could almost hear Montague shouting. How can you run, blend into the background, change identities? The authorities will catch you just by identifying the dog!

None of that mattered as he reached down and scooped Jack up in his arms. Jack whimpered and looked back at the grave, but he didn’t struggle as Logan carried him to his car.