“Been thinking about that. They maybe thought I couldn’t remember nothing then, but maybe I might one day. Not that I could prove nothing, but just me saying stuff might get them in trouble or at least get people looking around. Easiest thing was to kill me. Believe me, they tried that, but it didn’t work. Maybe they thought I was messing with ’em, playing dumb and hoping they’d give up the guard, and then I start talking. With them at the prison, they pretty much had me under their thumb. Read my mail, checked out people coming to see me. Anything look funny, then they just take me out. Probably felt better about doing it like that. After so many years, though, they got a little lazy, I guess. Let Samuel and that fellow from the Court come see me.”
“I figured that. But I still got that letter from the Army in to you. I didn’t know all this shit was going on, but I didn’t want them having a look-see at it either.”
The two stayed quiet for a while. Josh was naturally reserved and Rufus wasn’t used to having anyone to talk to. The silence was both liberating and oppressive to him. He had a lot he wanted to say. During Josh’s thirty-minute visits at the prison each month, he would talk and his brother would mostly listen, as though he sensed the accumulation of words, of thoughts in Rufus’s head.
“I don’t think I ever asked you: You been back home?”
Josh shifted in his seat. “Home? What home?”
Rufus started slightly. “Where we was born, Josh!”
“Why the hell would I want to go back to that place?”
“Momma’s grave is there, ain’t it?” Rufus said quietly.
Josh considered this for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, it’s there, all right. She owned the dirt, she had the burial insurance. They couldn’t not bury her there, although they sure as hell tried.”
“Is it a nice grave? Who’s keeping it up?”
“Look, Rufus, Momma’s dead, okay? Long time now. Ain’t no way in hell she’s knowing nothing about how her grave looks. And I ain’t going all the way down to damn Alabama to brush some leaves off the damn ground, not after what happened down there. Not after what that town done to the Harms family. I hope they all burn in hell for it, every last damn one of ’em. If there is a God, and I got me some big-ass doubts on that, then that’s what the Big Man should do. If you want to worry about the dead, you go right ahead. I’m gonna stick to what counts: keeping you and me alive.”
Rufus continued to watch his brother. There is a God, he wanted to tell him. That same God had kept Rufus going all these years when he had wanted to just curl up and sink into oblivion. And one should respect the dead and their final resting place. If he lived through this, Rufus would go see to his mother’s grave. They would meet up again. For all eternity.
“I talk to God every day.”
Josh grunted. “That’s real good. I’m glad He’s keeping company with somebody.”
They fell silent until Josh said, “Hey, what was the name of that fella come visit you?”
“Samuel Rider?”
“No, no, the young fella.”
Harms thought for a moment. “Michael somebody.”
“From the Supreme Court, you said?” Rufus nodded. “Well, they killed him. Michael Fiske. Anyway, I guess they killed him. Saw it on the TV right before I came to get you.”
Rufus looked down. “Damn. I figured that would happen.”
“Stupid thing he did, coming to the prison like that.”
“He was just trying to help me. Damn,” Rufus said again, and then fell silent as the truck rolled on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
* * *
With Fiske directing her, Sara drove to his father’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Richmond and pulled into the gravel driveway. The grass was brown in spots after another heat- and humidity-filled Richmond summer, but fronting the house there were carefully tended flower beds that had benefited from consistent watering.
“You grew up in this house?”