“Sometimes I worry that you don’t,” she says. “That you’re in a game with no rules. Or maybe that the other side is the only one making them, whatever Helene Mayes and Burt say.”
She pauses one last time. Suddenly, I think she might cry.
“I’ve loved two men my whole life,” she says. “I love my husband the way I do, with all my heart. And you know I love you.” Another deep breath. “If anything ever happens to you, and I know who did it, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would have it in me to kill that person. One hundred percent.”
One more time, I am back on the porch with EJ, listening to her tell me why she believes in her heart that Roof Crockett killed my father, all because my father flunked him out of school and off the football team.
“You know you’d do the same thing if it was you,” she says.
“Hundred percent,” I say.
SIXTY-TWO
EJ TUCKER HASN’T been sleeping well lately.
Some nights she doesn’t sleep at all.
Most of it, maybe all of it, is because she’s worried sick about Silas, who, if he isn’t leading this fight against Briar Crockett, has joined it in an extremely public way. And she knows her grandson well enough to know that this is more than him wanting to do the right thing, which he will do in any situation, as he has his whole life. No. This is about him needing a goal, a purpose, now that he doesn’t have football, because his purpose will never be farming, not in a million years.
Not because he thinks he’s better than the work.
It’s that he knows, and she knows, that he is cut out for so much more than laying crop and then still being around here to harvest it when the time comes.
But now he’s gone and put himself in harm’s way, and EJ is also smart enough about her grandson to realize it’s way too late in this particular game for her to tell him to stop.
So, after another night when she’s slept hardly at all, already wide awake right after the sun has come up, she gets out of bed. She putson some sweatpants, the UNC hoodie that Silas gave her, and the fancy HOKA sneakers that he also bought for her and prepares to head out for a good, long morning walk.
Normally she would take Bumper with her, now that this crazy, miracle dog of theirs has healed up again. Not only is the splint off Bumper’s leg, EJ can see she’s itching to start chasing cars and trucks all over again. But the dog sleeps right next to Silas’s bed when she’s not allowed to sleep on top of it, and EJ doesn’t want to wake Silas this early.
She noiselessly makes her way past his bedroom and then down the stairs before slipping out of the house. She’s given Charlie Hall and his son the day off, so there’s no chance of their having to exchange greetings at the barn. So the whole place, in the early morning, is as quiet as the middle of the night, in that soft half-light between night and day.
It’s not peace EJ is seeking this morning or expecting to find. There’s so little peace for her lately, what with the town meetings and this new woman cop, with the whole life of the town changing in front of her eyes because of the increased police presence. She prays every night and then on Sunday at church for the Lord to protect the good people in Cross Rivers who need protecting, starting with the ones she cares about the most, and really starting with the one asleep upstairs.
Only, she worries that she’s made even more trouble for him, for both of them, after having told Silas how she believes it was Roof Crockett who killed his father.
They haven’t spoken about it since. But she can see him carrying it around, can clearly see the weight of it on him, more weight for him to carry around on top of the accident that changed his life and brought him back to her.
One more thing scaring EJ nearly to death. That Silas might want to go at the Crocketts all by himself, seeking justice, if not peace.
She’s on her way back up the driveway, having walked a couple of miles up toward town and back, having thought all these thoughts along the way, when she hears the gunshots coming from the end of her fields.
The old woman doesn’t run anymore because of her creaky knees.
But she runs now.
Not away from the shots.
Toward them.
SIXTY-THREE
I’M AT THE far end of the property, out near the tree and the tire I’m trying to use as a way of proving to myself that I can still throw a football where I’m aiming it, and with a little something on it, when I hear EJ shouting at me.
Then see her running toward me on those wiry legs of hers.
I lower the Glock that Burt Webb has temporarily given me on loan, having made me swear I won’t leave the farm with it. Lower it to my side and press it against my leg.
The Dr Pepper cans I’ve lined up in front of the tree don’t catch her attention right away once she’s up on me.
