Under the Mercy Trees
Under the Mercy Trees
A Novel
Heather Newton
Dedication
For my redheads, Michael and Madeleine
Contents
Dedication
August 1955
Willoby News & Record,
October 14, 1986
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Willoby News & Record,
December 10, 1986
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Willoby News & Record,
Society Page, January 7, 1987
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Willoby News & Record,
April 9, 1987
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
August 1955
That last night at Rendezvous Falls, the Ford Sunliner seemed to drive itself, the engine so powerful it felt as if some force were pulling them up the mountain. Martin drove one-handed, vibration from the steering column numbing his palm. Beside him in the passenger seat Liza clutched his other hand, her grip folding bone. The moon lit up fields on either side. The car entered woods and climbed north, its headlights sweeping the curvy road. Liza pressed a fist against her mouth and began to cry.
They rounded a bend and the waterfall loomed up, higher than a four-story building, its roaring water spitting white in the moonlight. Martin pulled over to the side of the road and went around to Liza’s door to help her out. The air was cooler here than in town, and the water misting over them from the falls made Liza shiver despite her sweater. He almost told her to get back in the car, but she stepped past him and headed up the narrow path that led to the top of the falls. Martin reached in the glove compartment for a flashlight, then followed her. Rhododendron and holly branches slapped his body. Here and there bear scat dotted the path. Liza climbed on, her slender shoulders hunched, ponytail bobbing. Martin stumbled once or twice on tree roots before they came out onto the curving rock face just above the falls.
Liza stopped and breathed in the moist air, her shoulder blades rising and falling. Moon bled silver over the rock’s smooth surface, illuminating ferns that claimed a toehold in tiny cracks and glistening streaks of wet where the falls had sprayed the gray-and-orange stone. She stepped farther out.
“Don’t go too near the edge,” Martin said. The thunder of the falls drowned out his voice. He took her arm. “Let’s go back.”
She pointed to a long crevice that ran from where they stood down to a shelf behind the curtain of solid water. The braver folk of Solace Fork used it to slide behind the falls. “Come with me,” she said.
“No, Liza.”
“Please.” The moonlight seemed to stretch her skin taut over her cheekbones. Her face was fierce with all that she wanted from him, all that he couldn’t give her. She took the flashlight from his hand, then sat in the crevice and eased down on her seat, disappearing behind the white water.
Martin stood alone in the mist of the falls, unable to follow.
WILLOBY NEWS & RECORD, October 14, 1986
The family of Leon Owenby, 65, has reported him missing from the home place, off Bryson City Road. Mr. Owenby’s brother James Owenby saw him a week ago Tuesday when he went by to borrow a pair of tin snips, but nobody has seen him since. “It ain’t like him to take off without telling somebody,” said Hodge Goforth, Willoby County’s director of Emergency Services and a family friend. “You couldn’t run him out of the county.”
1
Martin
Broken. His last scrap of dignity twisted off like a chicken wing. Martin Owenby climbed three flights to the Manhattan apartment he shared with Dennis on West Fifteenth Street, his heart fluttering idiotically in his chest. The battered leather strap of his suitcase threatened to give way as he bounced it up the steps. Nothing valuable left inside if it did spill. Air wheezed through his nose in an exotic bird call. Tiny bottles of Scotch from the plane rattled in his overcoat pocket.
On the landing, he stopped to get his breath, then unlocked the apartment door. Dennis was dozing on the sofa in his dressing gown, his antiques crowding around him. He waited up for entertainment, not out of concern. His corpulent body curled like a woman’s. Martin and Dennis had been lovers once, until they both turned apologetically to younger men. Now they sniped at each other with the weapons of familiarity, like the worst of married couples.
Dennis blinked awake and saw Martin’s slept-in clothes and the bruise smeared blue-yellow across his left cheek, smelled the scent of liquor spilled three days ago down his shirtfront. “He rolled you, did he?”
He. The blond midwestern god Martin took to St. Kitts ten days ago. “It was worth it,” he said, wishing it were true. Tickets charged above the limit on his sole unfrozen credit card. Past fifty, looks and wit were no longer legal tender, and sex was costly. In this era of AIDS Dennis seemed content to remain celibate. Martin was not.
Dennis sighed and heaved himself off the couch. “Your family’s been calling. Your brother Leon has disappeared. It’s been over a week since they noticed him missing.”
“Missing?” Martin pushed his suitcase through the doorway of his closet-size bedroom. His head was less than clear, his tongue like cotton.
“I would have called you, if you’d left me a number,” Dennis said.
“Maybe he decided to go somewhere.” Martin didn’t believe the words. His oldest brother, so like their father, not a spontaneous freckle on his body. Up at five every day, peed off the porch, lit his stove. Made black coffee and cornbread. Fed the leftovers to the dogs, God forbid he should buy dog food. Splashed water on his face and combed what was left of his hair. Rinsed his mouth out and spit. Did his chores. Walked his property. Smoked a slow cigar. Martin stayed in touch with his other siblings, putting in just enough effort to keep them from writing him off. The women still babied him, his sisters and sister-in-law, and he even considered his brother James a friend. But not Leon.
“James said they found his truck at the house. But his wallet was gone,” Dennis said.
“Do they expect me to come home?” Martin knew the answer. He looked at his watch. It was too late to call his family. James would be asleep with his hearing a
id out, and it would be Bertie, James’s wife, who would be frightened awake. Martin could imagine her lying rigid in the bed, her prematurely white hair puffing around her head like a Q-tip, listening to the phone ring, expecting the worst.
“It’s a family emergency. And your friend Liza is prepared to meet you at the airport.” Dennis picked up a message from the telephone table and dangled it over Martin’s head.
Dennis was jealous of Liza, or rather, the myth of Liza that Martin perpetuated. Her picture, dropped artfully from his billfold for years to reassure employers and others of his heterosexuality. His girlfriend. His long-lost love. His brother Leon snapped the photo at Martin’s high school graduation, when Liza reached slender-necked to kiss Martin’s cheek. It had grown as frayed and dated as the lies Martin told. He kept the photo hidden now, tucked behind his maxed-out credit cards, but it still made him feel handsome and romantic to have once had this girl love him so.
He snatched the message from Dennis and started to call the airline, then remembered he was out of cash and credit and put down the receiver. “Can you lend me some money?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll pay you back. I’m expecting a check for that computer manual I edited.”
Dennis snorted. “I’ll lend you the money but only for your family’s sake. Put the plane ticket on my credit card, and I’ll get you some cash tomorrow.” He moved sideways between furniture to reach his wallet on an end table and handed Martin his Visa card.
Martin booked a flight for the day after next, giving himself time for the bruise on his face to heal, then dialed Liza’s number. It was late, but her voice when she answered was clear, not graveled by sleep. At the sound of it he felt tears press against the back of his eyes and turned toward the wall so Dennis wouldn’t see.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.” Her voice was young. She was still the auburn-haired beauty he had left in Willoby County more than thirty years ago. He gave her his flight number and arrival time.
“I’ll be there.”
He imagined her standing in the dim light of her kitchen. The last time he’d gone back to Solace Fork, a few years ago, she had cut her hair short, but her skin was as smooth and unlined as ever, her body trim. Martin wanted to reach through the phone line, have it take him back to when they were children. Liza was silent, and for a moment he thought he had lost the call. “Liza?”
“Yes?”
“Never mind.”
“So I’ll see you at the airport.”
“Put the top down for me,” he said, a reference to the baby blue convertible she drove when they were in high school, a lame joke to remind her who he was. They hung up.
“How sweet.” Spit glistened in the corners of Dennis’s mouth. “The two of you communicate without words.”
Martin wanted to shut him up, but Dennis had just lent him money. Martin and Liza didn’t need words because they invented in their minds the words they wished the other one would say. The image Liza had of him bore little resemblance to who he really was, but around her he was his best, most beautiful, and noble self. He was unbroken.
2
Liza
At the Owenby home place, carrying a cooler full of sandwiches as her excuse, Liza Barnard hiked up to where bloodhounds puzzled cold dirt and dozens of men raked a slow, ragged line over the property, their backs to her. Hodge Goforth, Willoby County’s director of Emergency Services, walked in the center. There was a pleasing softness about Hodge, inside and out. When he and Liza and Martin Owenby were children, Hodge may have coveted Martin’s hard muscle and sharp wit, but somewhere along the line Hodge had accepted himself. In front of Hodge, brush and trees thickened as the mountain sloped upward.
The men reached the boundary of the quadrant they had marked off and turned back toward Liza. Hodge saw her and waved. She put her cooler with a pile of food and equipment near the edge of the woods. Hodge left the line and came over to join her. Too many years of his wife’s good cooking hung around his middle, and he wheezed like an old dog.
“How’s it coming?” she said.
He shook his head, keeping his voice low. “We searched a week for the man. Now we’re looking for a body.” Frost had covered fallen leaves the past few mornings.
“What do you think happened to him?” Liza said.
“No idea, but I don’t have a good feeling about it.” Hodge pointed to Sheriff Wally Metcalf, who was walking their way, talking to his chief deputy. “Wally didn’t want to treat it as a crime, but I talked him into it. Old people wander off all the time, but this is different. Leon wasn’t confused, and he’d never leave his front door hanging open like that.” Over the ridge, Leon’s house, just visible at the base of the mountain, looked ready to fall in.
“Did the sheriff find anything at the house?” Liza said.
“Nothing. He’s told the family they can go back in.”
The sheriff spotted Hodge and Liza and headed toward them, grinning. “You distracting Hodge, Miz Barnard? He’s getting behind.” After teaching English at the high school for nearly three decades, Liza was Miz Barnard to everyone.
“Sorry, Sheriff,” she said.
“I needed a break. I’m not as young as I used to be,” Hodge said.
“Uh-huh. But you’re just as lazy,” Wally said.
Liza envied the easy friendship between Wally and Hodge. Hodge’s office was in the same building as the Sheriff’s Department. The two men saw each other every day. With all their history and Martin Owenby shared between them, Liza and Hodge still weren’t completely at ease when they were alone together.
“This would be easier if all the Owenby men got along,” Hodge said. “We’re having to keep them separated.”
At the far end of the line, Martin’s older brother James poked through underbrush without lifting his head. Closer by paced Steven Owenby, the son of Martin’s sister Ivy. Ivy had mental problems and hadn’t been able to take care of her children, but Steven had turned out well, considering. The muscles in his jaw and back twisted with impatience, and grizzled hair stood out from his head, but Liza knew he wasn’t as wild and scary as he looked. Steven was Martin’s favorite nephew. Martin wasn’t as fond of his other nephew, James and Bertie’s son, Bobby.
“You’re the only person I know who gets along with all of them,” Liza said.
“It’s an odd spot to be in at times.” Hodge called over to Steven, “Steven, come here a minute.”
Steven walked over. “Hey, Miz Barnard.” He took out a cigarette and lit it.
Hodge wiped sweat off his forehead. “You got any thoughts on this, Steven? You know this property about as well as anybody.” Steven and his brother and sister had spent most of their young lives in foster homes, but in the summers Leon had Steven out to help him around the farm. Liza imagined a young Steven sleeping in the attic. The hundred-degree heat under the tin roof would have been stifling, but better than a bed in foster care.
Steven shook his head and exhaled smoke. “Leon wasn’t afraid of the devil. He walked every inch of this property, in the light and the dark, at some point in his life.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “Look what I found yesterday, back in a cove where you’d swear nobody had trod since the Cherokee.”
They looked at what he held. It was the paper band off one of the cheap cigars Leon smoked, the words rubbed off by weather. Steven offered it to Wally Metcalf.
The sheriff shook his head. “He could be anywhere.”
Steven carefully put the band back in his pocket.
Wally said, “Steven, your uncle James told me the last time he saw Leon, your mother had just been by and left his clean laundry. Then when James went back a week later, there was almost no laundry in his dirty-clothes pile and the dogs hadn’t been fed. I wondered if you might have seen Leon during that week sometime.”
> “Naw.” Steven shook his head. “It’s been at least a month since I seen him.”
Martin’s brother James approached them, adjusting the hearing aid in his right ear so he could hear. He nodded to Liza, shy.
Wally pressed Steven. “You’d carry him around sometimes in that pickup truck of his, wouldn’t you?”
Steven tossed down his cigarette and stubbed it out with his toe. “Everybody knows I’d drive him when he needed me to. What are you getting at?”
“Man wants to know if you drove Leon around any week before last,” James said quietly.
Steven turned toward James, hatred on his face. “If I’d’ve drove him, I would’ve said. What are you saying, James? That I’d hurt the only one of you that ever showed my family a kindness?”
“I’m not saying any such thing.”
Anger spurted out of Steven like water from a slit hose. “The rest of you treated my mama like dirt, like she embarrassed you. Well, you’re the ones ought to be embarrassed. Walking into Solace Fork Baptist Church every Sunday of your lives like the saints of God or somebody, then letting us rot in foster care.” He spat on the ground. “If I was going to hurt somebody, James, you better believe it’d be you, not Leon.”