free hand on Becky’s shoulder. Her whole body shook, but the sobs had stopped.
“It’s okay. Just take care of Gerald,” I said, keeping my hand on her shoulder as I turned to Tucker. “What in the hell happened?”
“He came up here cursing and raising hell,” Tucker said, “saying he’d come to set things straight with me and nobody, including my guards, was going to stop him. I’ve got witnesses.”
“Did he physically assault you?” I asked. “Did he threaten you directly?”
“I didn’t give him the goddamn chance,” Tucker bristled. “Why the hell do you think I have security?”
“Did Gerald have a weapon?” I asked the security guard.
“No, but he said he was going inside to see Mr. Tucker and that we couldn’t stop him.”
“So you shoved an old man onto concrete and pulled a gun on him?”
“They were doing their job, Sheriff,” Tucker said.
Gerald muttered something to Becky.
“He wants to get up,” she said to me.
Becky and I helped Gerald to his feet. He looked around but he seemed unable to focus. Becky placed a hand on his arm to steady him.
“Get him to the doctor,” I told Becky.
She kept the hand on Gerald’s arm as he shuffled to her truck.
“You’re not taking him straight to jail?” Tucker asked incredulously. He raised a hand to the hearing aid plugged into his right ear, as if it had surely malfunctioned. “Are you shitting me?”
With his heavily creased face, unconcealed hearing aid, and no attempt at a comb-over of what hair he had left, Tucker seemed reconciled to his age, until you noticed his body. He wasn’t a tall man, five eight or so, but wide-shouldered, his body veeing to a narrow waist. Tucker had played football at NC State in the late sixties and even at seventy he radiated a running back’s compact, barely contained power. It wasn’t just golf that kept him in shape. I’d seen him at the Y in town, working with a trainer and always using free weights, not the machines. I felt that power directed at me now, and plenty of frustration.
“No,” I answered. “If your people had handled this right, I might be. That Beretta your security guard pointed at Gerald had its safety off. If I’m arresting anyone, it’s your employee for reckless endangerment.”
“Is that right about the safety?” Tucker asked the security guard.
The guard began to mutter something in his own defense, but Tucker cut him off.
“Get out of my sight before I fire you,” Tucker said, and turned to me. “I’m still swearing out a warrant on Gerald.”
“Fine, but I’ll not serve it.”
Tucker wasn’t a man used to people bucking him. He looked about to say something more, then abruptly turned and walked back up to the porch where C.J. now stood. Tucker passed him without any acknowledgment. I was about to speak to C.J. but he turned and went inside as well.
Seven
The smell of a room soaked in long silences, dusty quilts and mothballs, linger of linseed oil and mildew. My grandparents’ bedroom had been much the same, even the mattress sagged by weight and time. Those nights I came frightened but silent to their bed, a wordless shifting to make room. Worn springs soothingly sighed as feathers nestled around me. At breakfast come morning, no TV or radio or much said, allowing night’s stillness to linger, never asking more of me than a head shake or nod. My grandfather’s words when my parents brought me: This girl will talk when she’s ready.
The ladder-back chair’s legs scrape as I get up. Across the room, bedsprings stir but Gerald does not wake. I leave the house and walk to the barn. Grasshoppers launch, then land, the high stalks swaying. On a loud orange trumpet vine flower, a swallowtail’s blue wings open and close in slow applause. Caught on an angelica tree, a black snake’s cast-off stocking. Closer, ribs of milk traces, manure scabs the color of oatmeal.
The so-much of memory as I step into the dark and wait: always back then believing my grandparents’ barn was asleep until I’d entered, light’s slow emergence like one eyelid drowsily lifted. Even now something of that feeling as I step farther inside. In the corner the duster and pesticides I’ve talked Gerald out of using. Beside them a pitchfork and a kerosene can. A barn swallow flutters in the loft, then the parabolic swoop toward thicker light. On a stall door a leopard slug. Slug: its body a slimy slow lugging, and yet, the twice-pronged crown, the long robe’s silver wake. The slow going forth magisterial, as I’d seen as a child, now see again.
Good memories that even now can heal. Those mornings when I laddered to the loft, made my straw manger beside the square bale door. There on the straw-strewn floor, a sundial of slanted light. I’d reach my child’s palm into it, hold sunspill like rain. Eyes adjusting, much more revealed: junctions knit with spiderwebs, near cross beams dirt dauber nests, the orange tunnels rising like cathedral pipes. Sometimes a shadow suddenly fleshed, long black tail draining into the straw. The few sounds soothing, swallow wings rustling, insect hum. Then my grandmother’s voice. Come, child, it’s time to eat.
I step out into noon’s startling whiteness. Gerald still sleeps so I sit on the porch and take out my notebook, read the entries I wrote last week.
the hummingbird nest at the meadow edge—a strawy thimble
the hummingbird’s wings—stained glass alive in sudden sunlight shimmer
wildflowers sway in their florabundance
the grasshopper’s rasping papyrus wings
I take out my pen, remembering what I felt when Les came and placed his hand firm on my shoulder.
even the hermit thrush calls out to the world
Eight
I was plenty put out with Gerald, but I’d told Becky I’d do it, so at five o’clock I left the office and drove to Darby Ramsey’s house. The place was in no better shape than other times I’d been there, Darby’s idea of home improvement hanging a satellite dish on a sagging gutter. He hadn’t cut his grass in months and I didn’t see Gerald’s lawn mower. A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties stood on the porch, a blue cell phone pressed to her ear. She wore jeans and an oversize orange-and-white football jersey that made her look even skinnier than she was. But the number 13 seemed right for any woman hanging around Darby. When I got closer, I saw more than time had aged her. Eyes sunk deep in their sockets, teeth nubbed and colored like Indian corn, scabby chin. A fine addition to a Girls on Meth pinup calendar.
Inside, a toilet flushed. I knew what that was about, but at least I’d cost the asshole some drugs. The front door opened and Darby came out wearing only jeans, tousling his hair like he’d just gotten up. He lit a cigarette and smiled. His teeth weren’t wrecked like his lady friend’s, but the loose jeans argued graduation to meth-head status since I’d last seen him. I couldn’t help but think of William, Darby’s first cousin, who was dead at nineteen while Darby was still alive. Justice. You’d think a lawman would have some faith in that word, but in thirty years I’d seen too little of it.
The woman said, “Got to go,” and put the cell phone in her pocket.
“Come to ask me to be your replacement, Sheriff?” Darby asked.
Even halfway whittled to bone Darby still had a strut about him. I looked into eyes the color of