louder this time. A couple of the ambulatory residents went to the
fireplace to see if any birds were caught behind the damper in the
chimney.
“In his daddy’s blood,” Henry repeated softly. It was clear that, even
after all these years, the consideration of that moment was intolerably
painful to him.
The boy had not only been in his dead father’s arms but surely had known
that his mother lay dead among the ruins, and that he was orphaned,
alone.
Jim sat on a redwood bench in the Fair Haven courtyard. He was alone.
For a day late in August, when the seasonal drought should have been at
its peak, the sky was unusually heavy with unshed moisture, yet it
looked like an inverted bowl of ashes. Mixes of late-summer flowers,
cascading from planting beds onto the wide concrete walkways, were
missing half their color without the enhancement of sunshine. The trees
shivered as if chilled by the mild August breeze.
Something was coming. Something bad was coming.
He clung to Holly’s theory, told himself that nothing would come unless
he caused it to appear. He only had to control himself, and they would
all survive.
But he still felt it coming.
Something.
He heard the screaky cries of birds.
The birds had fallen silent, After a while Holly let go of Henry
Ironheart’s hand, took some Kleenex from her purse, blew her nose, and
blotted her eyes. When she could speak, she said, “He blames himself
for what happened to his mom and dad.”
“I know. He always did. He’d never talk about it, but there were ways
it showed, how he blamed himself, how he thought he should have saved
them.”
“But why? He was only ten years old, a small boy. He couldn’t have
done anything about a grown man with a submachine gun. For God’s sake,
how could he feel responsible?”
For the moment, the brightness had gone out of Henry’s eyes. His poor
lopsided face, already pulled down to the right, was pulled down farther
by an inexpressible sadness.
At last he said, “I talked to him about it lots of times, took him on my
lap and held him and talked about it, like Lena did, too, but he was so
much locked in himself, wouldn’t open up, wouldn’t say why he blamed
himself hated himself” Holly looked at her watch.
She had left Jim alone too long.
But she could not interrupt Henry Ironheart in the middle of the
revelations that she had come to hear.
“I’ve thought about it all these long years,” Henry continued, “and
maybe I figured it out a little. But by the time I started to
understand, Jim was grown up, and we’d stopped talking about Atlanta so
many years ago.
To be completely honest, we’d stopped talking about everything by then.”
“So what is it you figured out?”
Henry put his weak right hand in his strong left and stared down at the
gnarled lumps that his knuckles made within his time-thinned skin. From
the old man’s attitude, Holly sensed that he was not sure he should
reveal what he needed and wanted to reveal.
“I love him, Henry.”
He looked up and met her eyes.
She said, “Earlier you said I’d come here to learn about Atlanta because
Jim wouldn’t talk about it, and in a way you were right. I came to find
out a number of things, because he’s frozen me out of some areas of his
life. He really loves me, Henry, I’ve no doubt of that, but he’s
clenched up like a fist, he can’t let loose of certain things.
If I’m going to marry him, if it’s going to come to that, then I’ve got
to know all about him-or we’ll never have a chance to be happy. You
can’t build a life together on mysteries.”
“Of course, you’re right.”
“Tell me why Jim blames himself It’s killing him, Henry. If I have any
hope of helping him, I’ve got to know what you know.”
He sighed and made up his mind. “What I’ve got to say will sound like
superstitious nonsense, but it isn’t. I’ll make it simple and short,