“You were pushing yourself pretty good before Burt died,” she says.
She looks down at her glass, starts to raise it back to her lips before she sees there’s only ice now. Then she stands, and comes over to me, and gently pats the top of my head.
“Whenever you’re ready to talk about whatever it is we’renottalking about out here,” she says, “well,I’mhere.”
“Deal.”
“Gonna hold you to it.”
I say, “I’ll walk Bumper one last time before I turn in.”
I hear the screen door open behind me, but not close. When I turn, I see her holding it open.
“Your father didn’t talk, either,” she says, and then the door closes.
But she’s not gone. Softly, through the screen, she says, “You’re fixing to leave.”
Not even making it a question. Just letting it float there between us.
I turn now and say, “I love you, EJ.”
I think about going inside and getting another beer. I stay out here instead, rocking in the bigger of the two chairs my father favored, night sounds all around me, the big sky full of stars, tryingin vain to remember which planet it is I see close to the moon tonight. And not being surprised at all at how well my grandmother knows me, even when she doesn’t know exactly what she’s talking about.
Then, almost as if I can’t help myself, I’m back in Burt’s hospital room that day, that moment when I saw his eyes open and saw him smile at Taylor, and how, even bandaged up and attached to tubes and that monitor, he looked like the big, happy kid he’d always been, and I thought, just for that moment, that he was going to make it, that the worst was over. Right before the alarm sounded and it felt as if the whole hospital came running in there, even though it was too late for them to save him, because his great heart had stopped for good.
I stay out here a long time. I’m finally ready to go inside and get Bumper when I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket.
Taylor
Before I can say anything, I hear her say, “Silas, you… you have to help me.”
She hardly ever raises her voice, but she’s raised it now, not a lot, just more than usual. And she never asks for help, from me or anybody else, even after she’s just lost her husband.
“Tay,” I say, “what’s wrong? Is someone in the house?”
I wait.
“Tay, talk to me. Is someone there?”
“Just hurry.”
And ends the call.
I start down the steps for the truck, knowing the keys are in it.
But I stop myself, turn around, and go back inside and up the stairs to where I keep Burt’s Glock in my bedside table.
Then I run for the truck.
SEVENTY-THREE
TAYLOR’S JEEP IS parked where I can see it—in front of their two-car garage, next to Burt’s regular squad car, not the unmarked he’d driven to McDonald’s that day for reasons Helene Mayes is yet to have determined.
Maybe no one from the Cross Rivers PD has had the heart to come pick up the squad car from here and drive it back to the station.
There is no light coming from inside the house, just one porch light over the front door.
I’d been in their home for the meeting Burt Webb had called, Burt calling us all together that recent summer night to figure out a way to save our town.
