This story is rated PG-13 and has a few curse words and adult themes, though nothing graphic. If you are easily offended, please do not read this story. None of the views the characters express are shared by myself. They are purely fictional.

This Piece is Original Fiction by Clark Waggoner.

(c)2009 Clark Waggoner

This is part five from the collection of stories posted exclusively, for now, on Hubpages. They are an as yet untitled, and center around an imaginary small town in Oklahoma and the lives of several families across generations as they live, dream, and die there. The stories each move in reverse chronological order. Part six is coming soon.

This Part is quite lengthy, so it might be more enjoyable to read in multiple sittings.  I know staring at a computer screen for a long time can be difficult on my eyes.

-1-

…Misery, though, endures, and the dead

Stay dead forever…

- Aeschylus[1]

[1] Taken from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon the first part of his Oresteia.

Becky,

            I know you are probably shocked as you open this letter.  I figure you expected to never hear from me again at all, but I had to write.  I know the risk I run writing you, but I had to write.  I had to write to try to explain, and also to apologize.  First, I wanted to say sorry about this being a letter and not a phone call or a visit.  It had to be this way, they’d put me away forever if they ever found me.  I know it’s a sore substitute for a relationship with a walking breathing sibling, trust me—I know.  

            I realize that you have to have a lot of questions from that time, questions only I could answer, yet you’ve had to go it alone without a single answer.  I am sorry, I would have done it differently now. I’ve had seven years to think about it, I would have done a lot differently—trust me.  I know you weren’t old enough back then to completely understand, and well, I want to try to answer a few questions so maybe you’re life doesn’t have to revolve this stuff anymore. 

If you are too mad at me to even read this…thinking that I am just sort of dumping on you without giving you the chance to say anything…you are right, it’s unfair and for that and a hundred other reasons you should be very mad at me.  All I can do is say that you are right.  It is unfair of me to ask you to read this, but maybe you can see that the whole thing is unfair to me too.  Becky, you are the only person I know that I can trust to not turn me in, and I don’t even know that for sure, but it’s a chance I have to take.  My life isn’t worth living if I don’t at least try to get through to you.  I know there is no good reason for you to not hate me for the rest of your life, but if I can help it, I’d like to try to keep that from happening.  Hate is such an ugly and enduring thing…

When the call came in, Jim was next door at Miss Crowder’s. She was watching him while his parents were at the hospital waiting for the baby. Jim knew where they were. He knew all about hospitals, he was quite bright. He also knew how difficult the pregnancy had been, and he, at least in part, understood there was as much reason to worry as to be excited. Incidentally, this was the first time Jim had ever felt conflicted about anything; he was a boy—life had been simple thus far. So when she answered the phone, Jim strained to listen to Miss Crowder’s voice from across the hallway, anxious to hear the conversation. When her voice faltered to a whisper, something she only did when Jim was not to overhear, Jim’s hands began to sweat. Miss Crowder looked across the hall and saw Jim watching her. She got up and closed her door. This muffled her voice into shapeless moans that merely frustrated Jim as he tried to listen. As he waited for what seemed an hour, his pulse continued to climb and he had to dry his hands again and again on the legs of his jeans.

Miss Crowder finally hung up the phone and opened the door to her room. Jim was waiting in the doorway directly across the hall. After his grandmother died a few years back, he had spent the night in the opposite room many times. Usually when his parents were gone, or working past his bedtime, but also occasionally when Christy, Jim’s mother, felt Jim might bring her spinster neighbor some much needed cheer and companionship. Jim’s father was a professor of social sciences at the university, and until that night his mother had been writer and journalist when she wasn’t leading Jim’s Cub Scout group or trying to reclaim the backyard and turn it into a garden. She was marvelous. The only one who doted on her more than Jim was his father. She was everything, and now, without even saying goodbye, she was gone.

“What’d they say?” Jim stared at Miss Crowder’s forehead, something he did when he wanted to avoid looking someone in the eyes. He employed the trick when he knew he was in trouble, and despite the obviousness of the tell, it infuriated his mother. Miss Crowder looked down at the child who had come to occupy so much of her time and so many of her thoughts. Her heart broke more for the child in front of her than it ever had for her own numerous tragedies—she was that kind of selfless creature. Her eyes filled with long-overdue tears that Jim refused to see.

“Jim…your father will be home soon. He will want to…”

“What about my mom?” Jim interrupted, knowing he didn’t want the answer.

“Oh Jim…” Was all she could murmur as her breath caught itself and her eyes burst forth. Jim knew what was coming next and decided to skip the end of it. He ran down the stairs, through the front room, out the unusually short entrance and into the unforgiving street. The evening was lit more from the Carter’s house, and also at the dead end by the creek bed where the Thompson’s back porch light, which was famous for never being shut off, than it was the last rays of a tired sun. As Jim ran towards the woods at the end of the street the trees seemed to shoo back the light of the fading sun towards the street the same way a cow’s tail would shoo flies. Jim hardly even noticed this over the rushing pound of his heart. He ran without thought.

In a blind rage he ran past the Thompson’s and into the beckoning woods. He vaguely knew a dry creek bed was dead ahead of him, and that if he came across it wrong, it could be bad. But he was young, barely even nine, and the fresh terror of universal mortality drowned out any thoughts of his own individual safety. Luckily though, he only slipped a little when he crossed the creek. Once across, he was deeper into the woods than he had ever been before—though that thought didn’t occur to him as he plunged in. He ran as if no mere mortal, but rather all the Furies of Hades, were on his heels.

As he ran, Jim’s mind replayed what little he had heard of the phone conversation between Miss Crowder and his dad over and over. His adolescent body cringed each time he remembered her look before she closed the door. His face was hot and wet with tears he didn’t even know he was crying. He ran deeper into the woods than he would have ever gone otherwise. His face and arms were clawed at by toothy foliage he had no name for; his clothes were torn and bloody. He felt his jaw begin to ache and realized he was clenching his teeth as hard as he could. The dull ache brought him to his senses for the first time since he had run out of the house. The intensity of the panic began to relax its hold upon him. He drew to a stop, hunched over, panting, crying. He tried to take another step and collapsed. He was exhausted to his very soul, and could not move except to sob. The trees, shocked at the ferocity of the child in their midst, held their breath as they watched, waited, and wondered where it all would end.

As Jim’s sobs subsided, he learned to control his breathing. The measured breaths made him calm and slowed down the last rays of the disappearing sun. The woods were nearly black, though Jim had yet to realize this. With each breath, his sorrow faded slowly into the blackness of night, only to be replaced by an empty numbness for which he had no words to describe or understand. For the first time in his life Jim was all alone in a place he had never been before. He looked around him and saw the trees for the first time. A rustle sounded as they whispered about the boy at their feet. Behind the rustle, Jim could hear something else, something metallic, like the repetitive whir of a motor. Rather than confront the multiple layers of pain and sorrow in his own life, Jim let himself be taken in by the darkness of the night, by the woods, by the whirring noise, the latter of which was curious enough to prove a legitimate distraction from the world he ran from.

Jim climbed to his feet and walked in the direction the sound came from, which led him even deeper into the woods. The mechanical hum grew louder as he made his way through the undergrowth. Once, Jim paused because he heard, in the distance behind him, someone call his name. It was a man’s voice, his father’s, or one of the neighbors’. The sound of his name reminded Jim of what he would have to face when he went back home, so he quickened his pace in the opposite direction—in the direction of the hum.

Eventually the nearly complete darkness and unfamiliar trees overwhelmed Jim’s sense of direction. Unsure of even which way he came from, the only way he could keep his direction straight was to ignore everything except the sound of the metallic whir. Using this tactic, Jim eventually came to a place where the ground began to slope up. As Jim came to the top of an incline, he saw a strange little clearing directly in front of him. The moonlight fell at angles through the branches of the trees which lent the small clearing an ethereal lighting. In the middle of this clearing, somewhere in the middle of an old and hardly traversed woods, on this night of all nights, the moonlight revealed, to little Jim Clayton of all people, a very old manhole which had most likely not been seen by human eyes for the better part of a century.

Thinking perhaps he was close to a way out of the trees, Jim looked around. There was nothing. No other signs of civilization could be discerned, except of course for the sound that guided him. Jim, emboldened with the sense of adventure all little boys know, decided to investigate the manhole cover. And, as fate would have it, the cover was loose; it had not been put back on properly. The small gap of blackness between the lid and the rim stared back at Jim as he contemplated what lied beneath. It took him no time at all to locate and wield a large branch lying nearby to pry the lid open. Using his weight as leverage, Jim was able to dislodge the lid. As it moved, the branch gave way and he fell to his knees.

The atmosphere in the clearing changed as soon as the lid was off. Jim felt he was no longer alone. The curious sound of the motor grew louder. He took a deep breath and slowly leaned over the now open manhole to peer into the inky blackness below. However, it was so dark Jim couldn’t see anything except the first few rungs of an old ladder mounted in the wall that led straight down. After a moment of straining uselessly into the dark, Jim glanced at the overturned lid and realized there was writing on it. He didn’t know some of the words and it was dark so that made his task even more difficult, but even so, he could definitely make out the words, Liberty Brothers Glass Plant. He recognized them from the countless number of delivery trucks he had seen every week of his life for as long as he could remember. The ubiquitous vehicles were constantly exporting the plant’s famous glass products to places all across the Midwest.

As he was staring at the cover, wondering if the glass plant could actually extend all the way out here into the woods, he heard something else. A startling new sound began to emanate from the hole at his feet. When he tried to afterwards, Jim could never fully describe the sound, though he could never fully forget it, either. He usually settled on saying it sounded like a goat-boy or something moaning a nearly indistinguishable phrase which he thought sounded suspiciously like kill me or guilty but that he couldn’t be sure, the way the syllables were so twisted and drawn out. Secretly though, Jim felt certain that it was not a human voice—at least not fully human. That suspicion terrified his notions of reality, so naturally, he shrank from it which, along with the other events of that night, made the whole experience something he loathed to recall.

Human, animal, machine—whatever it was that sang to him from inside the earth—stood Jim’s hair into rows of rigid alarm. His hands shook and sweat as he listened. His stomach sank like the time he rode that rollercoaster in Dallas. He wanted to close his eyes until everything, or at least that pleading voice, stopped. He knew he had to get away from the sound, so he stooped to recover the manhole. Unfortunately the cover was too heavy without the branch for leverage. After a few moments, Jim realized the work it would take and decided to just get away before whatever was making that sound decided to come up out of the hole.

Jim backed away for a few dozen yards before he was out of the clearing and in the woods. The eerie call guilty, guilty could still be heard, though it was fading. Jim realized that the hum he had been following was so loud that he must be near the glass plant itself. It had to be somewhere close by, if he could find it, he could find a road, and then find his way back home. He followed the sound of the plant to find a way out of the woods. As he went, he began to see the outline of the smokestacks in the gaps of the treetops above his head. Then suddenly, he broke through and had nearly run into the fence around the plant’s perimeter. The fence stood so high that from its base Jim had to strain to see the top. He had never seen a fence that high before. It was also covered with barb wire from the bottom to top, something else Jim had never seen up close before. There were many and varied signs that Jim could only partially read, but still completely understood, forbidding anyone to trespass on Liberty Brothers property. His boyish mind imagined incredible reasons for a fence like that, while at the same time a new significance developed in his mind for the manhole in the forest. As Jim considered these things and imagined his triumph in thwarting such an elaborate defense system, it never occurred to him that the fence was there as much to keep things in as it was to keep things out.

Approaching footsteps from the other side of the fence interrupted Jim’s reverie—heavy, methodical thumps that sounded more like huge barrels being dropped in rhythm than actual footsteps. Jim ducked behind a tree. The earth shook as whatever it was approached. Little Jim Clayton, with his dirty face and cried-out eyes, little Jim Clayton, in his stained and torn clothes, little Jim Clayton, who had never explored here, or anywhere before, little Jim Clayton, kept as still as a stone and waited calmly to see what sought him. The care-free boy of a few hours ago was nearly unrecognizable as he calmly and purposefully watched the thing approaching his hiding spot. Something unimaginably giant and lumbering stepped out of the darkness.

The lights from the distant windows of the plant cast shadows at weird angles so Jim couldn’t make out the features of the thing that slouched in front of him. The smell of unwashed body and sewage assaulted Jim’s nostrils and he almost became sick on the spot. The smell shook his confidence. There was no reason or place for a smell like that and somehow, inside where it mattered, Jim knew it. He became grateful it was too dark to make out what stood before him. But he could smell, and hear its breath, heavy and labored with a guttural quality that reminded Jim of the Thompson’s big old Great Dane before it was put down. The thing in front of him sniffed the air; Jim held perfectly still, he didn’t even breathe. Something snapped and a light shone into the darkness from the direction of the figure. It shone first at Jim’s hiding spot, and then, after what seemed like forever, circled to the surrounding area. Jim had still not breathed. He didn’t until the light beam was safely away from him. The light continued in slow, methodical circles until a shrill whistle sounded from the plant. The thing and Jim both looked in the direction of the plant. There was another snapping noise and the light had disappeared. Jim knew the whistle; it was the same one he had heard countless times before from his bed at night.

The shift at the plant was now over, and a new one was beginning. Soon many men would come into the yard making their way home. The thing on the other side of the fence turned and crept back towards the plant. Jim waited until he was sure it was gone, and then ran along the fence to the road, and then back towards the home that had changed so much in his too short absence.

“They won’t even come to the house, I bet. I don’t see why they would want to, not after so much time and everything else.”

“But if they do stop, what do you think will happen? Will Miss Crowder be mean, you think?” Becky was lying on her back in her usual spot atop the concrete and brick banister that encircled the front porch. The wood of the porch floor, not as able to cope with its age, exposure, and lack of care as the stone casing that enclosed it, slowly deteriorated into a rotted mess of debris, paint specks, and memories of lazy summer days. An old, wooden picnic table with a bench attached on either side had set on the porch for years—until last summer, when it collapsed under the weight of Becky and her dolls and was finally thrown out. The faded marks where its legs had rested for years upon years were all that now remained.

Out back, there was still the old broken bench-swing, half standing, half sinking into the weeds, that Jim had thought so big and exciting when he was very young. Near the swing clumped a tight cluster of several elm trees. Somehow they had been allowed to grow in such close proximity, despite the nightmare it presented to anyone trimming the lawn—an issue that had bothered no one for years. They were close enough, in fact, that one could move from the limbs of one tree to another without any real fear of falling. There were even a few planks of wood stretched between the trees that Bobby Thompson and Jim had nailed in place one summer, years ago. They had intended to build an entire fort in the tree branches, but had only ever achieved a few walkways. The rest of the lawn—including all the remaining signs of Jim and Becky’s mother’s many attempts at gardening—were slowly becoming wild vegetation again.

The front lawn, if it could be called that, was dwarfed by a massive oak tree with roots that stretched themselves from the porch to the street. The grass had long ago given way to the twisted maze of roots that tumbled over and under each other at every opportunity. The oak had been struck by lightning a few years back, and a large section at the top had been severed from the trunk. It lay dead and cradled in the large, still-living branches below it. Occasionally one of the dead branches would slip through during a storm and end up on the Crowder’s front lawn. Inevitably it would always fall to Jim to remove the offending branch. He could remember when the dead section was much larger.

“Miss Crowder’d probably not do or say anything at all until after they had left, and even then if she was gonna be mean, she’d do it alone up in her room where no one, including us, could hear or see anyway.” Jim looked at her hard. He sat on the adjacent concrete ledge with one leg idly swinging on the outside of the porch. His eyes stared off towards the end of the street, and the woods that lie beyond…they stared back, daring him to spill their secrets.

Through the trees and distance, the hum of the glass plant echoed just as it had for the ninety-eight years since the doors first opened, even though Jim only first recognized it for what it was the night his mother died. For some reason, before that, he had never really noticed the plant there, hulking in the distance, but since that night he had learned very well just how saturating the hum from the plant was. He shuddered to think of that place, of the things he had seen there.

Carla Carter, the busybody across the street from the Claytons, was fond of pointing out how clever her father had been when he had, in some curious moment, said that the glass plant “hummed like ether.” Carla Carter did not point out, however, that her father committed suicide in the basement of the glass plant, and the way Jim heard it, he wasn’t the only one. In fact, in just a few hours, though Jim and Becky didn’t know it at the time, the plant would claim two more victims. But in the oppressiveness of the late-afternoon-sun that part of Oklahoma was subjected to, even the most dastardly or otherwise desperate of plans were sedated, so all remained calm, all remained complacent—if only for the afternoon.

Jim and Becky were the third generation of Claytons to grow up on South Adams under the shadow of the Liberty Brothers Glass Plant. They were also the third generation to daze and dream away the too-hot afternoons of late summer in the comparative cool of the porch, preferring it to the broiler of a house their great-great-grandfather built back in God knows when. The house itself gleamed artificially bright in three summer old vinyl siding, which was the only visible renovation their father, David, had seen to since their mother died while giving birth to Becky. The pregnancy had been complicated, ask anyone. The siding was a synthetic light gray plastic that had replaced the chipping yellow exterior of the old house. It looked awkward at best, in disastrously bad taste at worst. Carla Carter, in her reputedly clever way, pointed out to Miss Crowder that simply putting cheap vinyl-siding on such a heap looked silly, like a fat old forty-year old wearing teeny-bopper clothes.

The famous Miss Crowder had lived in the faded green house next door for over fifty years. During those years other Crowders had come and gone, but now only Miss Lucy Crowder remained. Lucy, or Miss Crowder, which was the name she was solely known by to the Clayton children, was perpetually one of Becky’s favorite topics of gossip. It shouldn’t be that hard to understand—Lucy Crowder was as much the only mother Becky Clayton ever knew as Becky Clayton was the only daughter Lucy Crowder ever knew. The relationship, fragile yet loving, was marked by a strained sense of formality that restricted outright declarations or displays of affection. This pact of silence, if you will, was born of a mutual and unspoken respect for the other’s loss as well as their own personal fears of rejection. The woman and child both admired, envied, pitied, and cherished each other in the simple and dramatic way human beings do when they are lonely in every possible sense of the word. So, as might well be imagined, on any given too-hot afternoon, all sorts of chatter about the Claytons’ spinster neighbor might drift up from their porch and to the conveniently open window next door.

Of course all of this was about to change, the time for lazy idleness and childish irresponsibility were about to meet their most unexpected end. This would be the third time in Jim’s life where the events of a few hours changed everything, and it would happen a fourth time. This way of life, this…being the same for years and then thunderously changing in a few hours, was something both he and Becky talked about, even when she was too young to possibly understand what he was struggling with. Jim regretted how you could never go back. Innocence is not reclaimed. Experience is not unlearned.

“I know what I’d do if I was Miss Crowder. Do you think she even wants to see them again? I asked her if she did, but she didn’t answer. She just looked off the other way like she does when she doesn’t want to talk.” A tired train whistle expired from the direction of the glass plant. Decades earlier, at the time the town first exploded in size; the train came to transport oil, people, and of course glass. When the oil wells finally dried up and people had learned quicker ways to travel, the glass plant was still growing, so unlike many other small towns in Oklahoma, the trains kept on coming. The tracks always reminded Jim of Frankenstein’s stitches. In his mind’s eye he saw the dark secret heart of this place beating beneath a ground that had to be sewn back together with such brutal stitches because nothing else could contain it. As his mind wandered over such thoughts, he stared out through the heat of the late afternoon in the direction of the glass plant, listening, remembering. His sister cleared her throat to remind him he was supposed to be listening to her and maybe even replying every so often.

“Sorry Becky, my mind was wandering. But if you ask me, I don’t think there is much she could do or want to do about it all now anyway. After a while, well, there is nothing left to fight for. Dad told me once that when her mother left after the tornado, Miss Crowder was still too young to make her own decisions about where she wanted to live. Dad also said it wasn’t really our business, and that we already know more than either of us or Carla Carter, for that matter, have a right to know. You need to not talk about Miss Crowder when she is not around so much, Becky. The way Carla Carter talks about people all the time, that’s called gossip, and it’s not nice.” A familiar whistle sounded from the plant—another shift was over. The men who had worked the fires through the heat of the day were finally discharged from the bowels of the plant and into the muggy sunset.

“Well call it gossip if it makes you feel better, but I like Miss Crowder and that’s why I talk about her. I hope she lets them both have it, tells them how mean they were for leaving her here all alone. Mrs. Carter told me that they should have come back for her after Mr. Crowder died. She was only seventeen, just a year older than you!” She threw a rock she had been fingering into the sparse lawn. It bounced and rolled into a depression where a large hole was routinely dug whenever the ancient sewage line was clogged by an intruding oak tree root, or worse. “It’s not fair; you just can’t forget about your family and leave your home like that. How could they, how could anyone?”

Jim looked around. Some home, he thought to himself. He wondered why Miss Crowder didn’t leave when she was young and had her whole life ahead of her still. If he had known how much it had to do with another Clayton boy—his father—who was only six years old at the time, he might have felt differently about the relationship between his family and Miss Crowder. People do strange things for love. Jim’s eyes moved beyond the Crowder place to the far end of South Adams where the only other two-story house on the block sat. It belonged to the Thompsons. They were the only other family on the block with children. They had a son roughly Jim’s age and a daughter a few years older than Becky. Jim’s eyes moved past their house towards the dry creek bed and the woods beyond.

On the opposite side of the street squatted the Carter’s green and white duplex. The driveways on either side of the duplex were full with Richard’s many broken-down cars. For some reason, even though they were married, Rich and Carla lived and slept in separate halves of the duplex. There was also an old man who lived next to the Carters, but Jim and Becky have only seen him a few times, and tried to stay away from his house because the weeds were so tall that all kinds of unpleasant things took shelter there. The only other house on the street was a rent house directly across from the Claytons. It changed residence far too often for the kids to keep up with who lived there, and aside from one night when the cops came and took a man away in handcuffs, it made no impression upon the children or their understanding of their own neighborhood.

Jim’s eyes returned to his sister, her ponytails, her buckteeth, her dirty pants, “I already told you that you shouldn’t be listening to Mrs. Carter. Dad says that the only things she repeats are things she shouldn’t, and that she makes them the worse for her telling them.”

“How would he know? He never talks to her. Mrs. Carter also told me the only reason Miss Crowder chose to stay with her father when her mom left was because he told her he would let her eat chocolate whenever she liked. Do you think mom liked chocolate as much as Miss Crowder when she was a girl? I do.”

“Seriously Becky, if Dad finds out how much you’ve been talking to that busybody, you’ll be in trouble. Besides, Miss Crowder has always looked after both of us when no one else would. We should keep rumors from spreading about her, not start them.”

“Did mom like chocolate?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

Becky returned to the subject of Miss Crowder, ignoring Jim’s rebuke, “Still though, after her dad died, her mom should have come back for her, don’t you think? Seventeen is too young, right? Would you leave me all alone if Dad died when I was seventeen?” Jim was surprised to hear that question.

“Of course not! I’d never leave you, not for any reason.”

“You promise?” She looked at him so seriously for a child that he couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t laugh! Promise me!”

“Of course I promise, goober.”

The sun sank in the west; shadows crept from the corners of the old porch and spread slowly across the deteriorating wood. No birds sang; it was too hot for even them. Jim looked around the street, at the other houses—each with its own little metal gate on its own little metal fence, but all hanging limply, listlessly open. There used to be a useable sidewalk on the Clayton’s side of the street, but the oak, when it had grown large enough, found it very inconvenient. No one had bothered to lay a new one, so now there were just dangerous chunks of cement at odd angles.

After a while he recalled Becky saying how unfair it was that Mrs. Crowder had left this place and her daughter completely behind, “When you get older, maybe leaving all this,” and here he gestured in the direction of the glass plant, “will make more sense to you. Just…they should have sold the house and made her leave. No one should have to be here, especially if they are alone, this place is rotten. This place sucks the soul out of you.” He knew she couldn’t understand, but he didn’t care. Jim had often wondered if small towns, by nature, made people think small thoughts, or if it was something particular to his own experience. There was evidence both ways, he had finally decided.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with it here? I mean besides it being too hot.” Becky had found another rock that had somehow made its way up onto the ledge that surrounded the porch. Jim watched as she absently began thumbing again; he had seen his dad do the same thing, many times, though he was fairly certain Becky had not.

“I mean that Miss Crowder is old now, and when they left her here, that was a very long time ago. She could have left anytime after that, but she didn’t. She could have found her mother if she liked, or at least have done the same thing she did, you know…get out while she was young enough to do something with her life.” He paused as he examined the fine sand under his fingernails, “and I guess I mean that I think this place is bad for people, if you stay too long that is. I want you to leave this place one day, Becky…so you don’t become another Miss Crowder.” Her eyes shot back a questioning look beneath her wrinkled brow. He knew she was too young to even want to understand that sentiment, so he added, “Don’t worry about it, Becky. I am just being stupid. One day, when you get old enough, you’ll understand. For now, just know that the world is too big to spend your whole life in one place….ok?”

“Ok, whatever you say.” She was not buying it. “I am hungry. What’s for dinner?” Dinner was solely Jim’s responsibility. His father rarely ate and even more rarely thought about spending time with his children. The only family dinner they ever had was occasionally on Sunday afternoons when Miss Crowder invited all three over for pot roast and potatoes.

“It is dinner time, isn’t it? Well…what do you think? Spaghetti, or maybe spaghetti instead?”

She grinned at the familiar question, which meant she was going to have her all time favorite dinner, and answered enthusiastically, “Both!”

-2-

There are wrongs in the world, and the powers of darkness

are loosed

To infect the earth and foul the air with plagues.

The healthy flesh, corrupted, will ulcerate,

And leprous lesions blossom everywhere

among the fungal encrustations eating

the suffering bodies away.

- Aeschylus[1]

[1] Taken from a speech by Orestes in The Libation Bearers, part II of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia.

I know you think I did it because of Bobby, and in some ways, that’s true. I heard about Dustin too, and I can only imagine what they did to Greg Anders. But you have to believe me, it was much, much bigger than us, or our parents, or anything. That glass plant was not what we thought it was, and it had stood there for far too long. Becky, please don’t think I’m crazy, please. Becky, believe me, as long as that plant was there, we had no real future, none of us did. I know that sounds crazy, but you know me, you saw Bobby’s mom, you have to believe me. You do believe me, don’t you? If I didn’t do it, the cycle would have gone on and then it would have been someone else whose life was ruined like Carla Carter’s dad, or Bobby, or his mom, or who knows how many people before them.

As far as the workers who were killed or hurt when I blew the plant up, I know their blood is on my hands, and not a day goes by where I wish I had done it a better way…but I can’t go back Becky. It is something I have to live with for the rest of my life, please don’t carry that burden too. I don’t know how to do this Becky. I don’t know what the right words are to reach you, but look, here’s what I want to say, bottom line: Someone had to break the cycle, any cost was worth it—my life included. That’s all I can really say.

I made a lot of mistakes, too many. A lot of what happened was simply because I waited too long to do what should have been done…I was just a kid. If I knew more, if I was older, I could have come up with a plan that made sure no one got hurt, I should have done it years earlier and saved all of them--Dustin, Shreve, Bobby, His mom, Greg—all of them. I realize now how big of a mistake it was to join the ministry at church like I did. It’s so clear to me now that I only took the position because I lacked the strength to do what I really came back home to do. I fooled myself into thinking it would all be ok and that I would somehow be safe because I was in the ministry, but…well…I was wrong, and other people paid the price…I hope Roger Casey doesn’t blame himself for giving me the job. If I had been a better steward, if I had been stronger, none of this would have happened. Becky, please believe me. It’s ME, Jim, your brother…the same one that carried you to Miss Crowder’s when you fell out of the tree and broke your arm…the same one that hid Mom’s Christmas ornaments with you so dad wouldn’t find them and throw them away…It’s me, Jim. You believe me, don’t you?

Jim always imagined the Thompson’s two story house looked like a man, or guard, who had been on watch so long he had fallen asleep on his feet while leaning on his rifle. He thought the house looked like it leaned precariously, about to topple forward into the street at any moment. Jim imagined the house/soldier was all that remained of a force that silently guarded something it itself had long forgotten the significance of. As Jim walked up the front steps, he slyly saluted the old building with one hand while clutching his Lone Ranger pillow in the other. Bobby opened the door before Jim even had a chance to knock. The pair grinned at each other. Both boys reveled in the fact they had the whole night to get into trouble, though Bobby’s mother made them both promise such trouble would not be gotten into as part of the agreed to terms of the sleepover.

“You are not gonna believe it! Guess what! Mom says we can stay up and roll the TV into my room to watch the late movie after Sarah’s gone to bed. Just don’t let Sarah find out.” Bobby ushered his friend inside. Jim had been over several times, but this was his first time to spend the night. Jim’s mother had always disapproved of Shelly Thompson’s working such late hours and not being home to tuck her children in, something Christy Clayton felt was obligatory of all good mothers. So Jim had not been subjected to tuck-less bedtimes while she was still around to prevent him from being so treated. His mother would, however, allow Bobby to come over to the Clayton’s at almost any time of the day or night. Anyone who needed a place was always welcome she had always said, although, as time passed, every time Jim quoted one of her sayings he found he could remember fewer and fewer of them. It wasn’t until tonight, though, that Jim learned what kind of bedtime his mother had really, albeit completely inadvertently, kept him from.

“Awesome, we can really stay up that late? That’s so cool. My dad would never let me take the TV into my room…”

“Shhhh! If Sarah hears, she’ll throw a fit until my mom makes us let her sleep with us. This is top secret, Operation: Keep Sarah Out.” Bobby grinned. One of the defining characteristics of Jim and Bobby’s young friendship was its ability to slip into a mutually understood game where they were agents on top secret missions of immense international importance at a moment’s notice. This made even the most mundane chores exciting while at the same time infuriating and fascinating Bobby’s younger sister who, like most younger siblings, struggled to keep up during playtime. This made the game all the more rewarding for the boys. The prospect of having a real secret to actually keep from her heightened the stakes significantly.

Jim grinned back, and solemnly whispered, “If she finds out, the television could be destroyed. All could be lost. You do remember what happened the time she got a hold of the tape recorder, don’t you? We must never let that happen again, even if it costs our lives!”

Bobby looked around suspiciously as if they might be under surveillance, “She’s been planting bugs all over the house. She could be listening even now.” He looked around again and pulled Jim to him and whispered, “Suppose it’s a trap, and we get captured?”

“I’m not afraid of torture! I’ll never betray the location of the hidden TV, I swear it.” Jim whispered back. Just then Sarah appeared and the boys tried to act casual, like they had not been talking about her. Sarah wanted to play with them so they played Monopoly, a game Sarah hated, until it was her bedtime. As soon as she was in bed, they quit feigning interest in board games and immediately had the TV unhooked and down the hall to Bobby’s room.

The walls of Bobby’s room were decorated with posters of KISS, Donnie and Marie, Johnny Carson and other celebrities Jim barely knew. Bobby had cousin’s who kept him way more current on popular culture than Jim’s father and Miss Crowder ever could. One wall in particular, Bobby’s pride and joy, was covered completely with Star Wars wallpaper and was therefore the only wall that was poster free. The two boys wheeled the TV cart quietly into a corner with an electrical socket. Pillows and blankets were taken from the bed and arranged and suspended from chairs brought in from the dining room to make a hideout/viewing tent no child could resist. The boys, like any self-respecting ten year olds, called this contraption “home base.” The late night movie was The House of Wax with Vincent Price, and although neither of the boys knew exactly who Vincent Price was, they recognized his name and talked as if they were very familiar with his work and, like any critic, had high expectations of the upcoming film.

After the movie the boys fell asleep in home base while discussing the pros and cons of being turned into wax figures. The conversation slowly died out as the sounds of the house lulled the boys to sleep. A window shutter squeaked as it moved in the wind, crickets chirped through an open window somewhere, the Thompson’s ancient refrigerator hummed and gurgled to itself. The house was a sea of sounds upon which a dreamer could set sail. Jim, unaccustomed to his surroundings, drifted in and out of a confused sleep where the sounds of the house became the soundtrack to dreams of being lost in the woods with Vincent Price. In the dream Jim and Vincent Price were trying to find the manhole he had seen the night his mother died. It evidently led to Vincent Price’s secret hideout. Though Jim never thought about it enough to mention it to anyone, he dreamed about the manhole all the time. He even dreamed about it more than he did his dead mother.

As they searched the woods in his dream, Jim and Vincent began to hear a new sound—something familiar and yet out of place. Jim began to realize he knew what the sound was, but at first he could not, or perhaps would not, recognize it. It was the old gut-wrenching and sickly call of some creature repeating the same cryptic phrase over and over. Jim’s stomach sank—somehow he knew this was very bad. The noise grew louder and Jim began to sweat like he always did when he was scared or nervous. Whatever was making the sound was coming towards them, and try as he might to see what it was, his eyelids had become so heavy he could not open them enough to see anything. At best he could only catch glimpses of a contorted and shadowy figure moving through the trees. Whatever he had heard that night cry from the manhole had found him again in his dreams.

The cry was suddenly so loud Jim realized it was right there in the room with him. He was waking up, slowly. The realization that he was in a room, and not the woods, brought Jim to his senses. Trees turned into chairs and blankets, and before he knew it, Jim was awake. He would have normally felt relief after waking up from a dream like that, but his heart was beating faster and faster. Something was wrong—his nightmare had followed him back to the real world. He lied as still as he could, not daring to open his eyes. The cry had seemed so real that he felt certain it would sound again at any moment. His ears went where his eyes dared not, but all he heard was Bobby’s regular breathing, the crickets, the wind, and the refrigerator. He listened a moment longer—nothing. So he opened one of his eyes—his left one, just a tiny bit. As his eye adjusted to darkness he slowly began to make out a dark figure standing at his feet, in front of the television. Jim closed his eyes again as his heart leapt—someone or something stood above him, waiting, watching, hovering.

Jim dared one more peek at the figure at his feet. It swayed back and forth like a ghost in the wind. Then the awful and familiar cry sounded again, and this time it came from the figure in front of him. Jim, unable to remain calm anymore, screamed and desperately shook Bobby, “Bobby! Bobby! Wake up…someone is in the room! Wake up!” Bobby sat up immediately, rubbing his eyes and trying to figure out what was wrong. Once his eyes were fully open and he was awake, he saw the figure that had scared Jim. Instead of screaming as well, he jumped up and ran towards it, even as it emitted its haunting plea again.

“Mom? Mom! Wake up!” Bobby started shaking the figure in front of him, even as the moaning grew louder and louder. Like it had in the woods that night, the voice repeated one phrase only, over and over, and also like before, Jim could not be sure if that phrase was kill me, or guilty.

“Mom, wake up! It’s Bobby, you’re home. Everything’s okay, Mom!” Right then, Bobby’s dad, Steve, burst into the room and turned on the lights, which temporarily blinded everyone.

“Shelly! What are you doing in here? Honey, are you awake? You are safe. We’re home; this is Bobby’s room, see? Shelly, do you know where you are? Wake up honey, we have company, you’re scaring the children. Shelly, it’s Steve. Wake up.” Bobby’s mom slowly opened her eyes. From behind her lids peaked out hatred and fear. Jim realized that he knew where she went while she dreamed, that it was the same place that haunted his dreams. She slowly gathered her wits and responded to Steve’s questions. The fear and loathing that had been in her eyes moments earlier faded into exhaustion. The strange call, which seemed to emanate more from her throat than mouth, faltered suddenly—like whatever made it had been cut short against its will. Jim watched in awful fascination. His young mind reeled from implications of a connection between whatever was inside the manhole and Bobby’s mother’s nightmares. He watched the scene in front of him unfold without moving a muscle or barely even breathing. Shelly was coming around and started to talk.

“I…what happened? I thought…oh look, it’s the neighbor boy.” Her demeanor changed into that of a mother. It obviously bothered her that she had scared Jim so deeply, “I think maybe I was sleep walking again, sorry if I frightened you, Jim. I sometimes do that when I’m restless. Did I step on you boys?” Shelly tried to smile reassuringly and laugh it off, but Jim, still overwhelmed, wouldn’t even look directly at her or acknowledge her effort to smooth things over.

“She has a lot on her mind. I should have warned you to look out for sleepwalkers, Jim, but it doesn’t happen that often so I forgot to mention it,” Steve continued for her. Jim looked down and felt a longing to be at Miss Crowder’s where he knew he would be held without having to say a word. He knew the room was quiet, and that they were waiting for him to talk, but he just couldn’t. He grew frightened that somehow the Thompsons would find out about what he had found in the woods, though he was unsure why. He glanced at Bobby in a silent plea for mercy. Bobby understood something was wrong and saved his friend from having to answer right away.

“We’re fine, Dad…sorry Jim, I should have warned you too, pretty scary after that movie, huh?” Jim managed to look up from the blankets and smile a little as he nodded in agreement with Bobby.

“Well, I’m just glad everyone is okay,” Bobby’s dad said as he turned his attention back to his wife. Right then, however, Sarah began crying from the other room, so Jim was saved from having to talk once again.

“Well it seems like we’re all up now! I’ll go check on her. Sorry once again for scaring and waking you boys. You go ahead and go back to sleep. Jim, I hope you know how happy Bobby is to have you over, and again, I am so sorry. Tell you what boys, how about I make my famous waffles in the morning to make up for ruining your night’s sleep, huh? Would you like that?”

“Yes! You will love my mom’s waffles, Jim.” Bobby said excitedly.

“Well then, you boys try to get back to sleep. I have to go check on your little sister.” Shelly leaned down to kiss Bobby on the forehead and she and Steve left the room.

After the adults left the room, Jim finally worked up the nerve to say something about the strange voice Bobby’s mom had made in her sleep. “My mom always does that when she sleepwalks. I know it doesn’t sound like her, but it’s always the same. Why?” Bobby laughed half-heartedly, trying to mask his sensitivity about the subject. Jim tried to look in his eyes, but this time it was Bobby who avoided the gaze.

“It didn’t sound like your mom at all. It sounded more like an animal, or…I don’t know, what do you think?” Bobby looked at Jim, trying to figure out why he asked that. He shrugged, but didn’t reply. Bobby was ashamed at what Jim might think of his mother, so he wanted to change the subject. Before he could say anything, however, Jim swallowed hard and asked, “Bobby, can I tell you something?”

“There’s nothing wrong with her, okay? She just has some bad dreams, is all. My dad says a lot of people make weird noises in their sleep. You snore, you know.” Bobby was obviously upset.

“Bobby, I need to tell you something, but you have to promise me to keep it a secret.”

“Look, I don’t know why she sounds like that, but that doesn’t mean she is messed up or something. Dad said not to say anything to her about it, so she wouldn’t feel bad. I don’t think she even knows she does it, so how can it be her fault?”

“Bobby! Listen to me. Promise me you can keep a secret.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve heard that sound your mother made before.”

“What do you mean? Like from outside? She’s that loud? Who else heard? That old lady next door, I bet. Well what does she know? She’s crazy, living there all alone for so long.”

“No Bobby, I heard it somewhere else. It wasn’t your mom.” Bobby was completely taken aback.

“What do you mean heard it somewhere else? Where? How?”

“Look, you can’t tell anyone, okay? You have to promise me.”

“Tell anyone what?”

“Just promise me it’s a secret, or I’m not telling you anything.”

“Okay, I promise, now tell me where you heard it and what you’re talking about.”

“Well the truth is I’ve only ever heard it once before, and it was, well, it was the night…uhm…you know, the night Becky was born.” Bobby was shocked. He was silent for a few moments before he said anything.

“That was a long time ago man. Are you sure?”

“Bobby, I’m positive…that’s not the sort of sound you forget. I was out in the woods…I had taken off running when I found out, well you know…about my mom. Anyways, I was sorta lost in the woods and well, I started following the sounds of the glass plant to find my way out…and, well…well, I… found an old manhole in the middle of nowhere.”

“In the woods right next to our house? Are you serious? Where? I’ve never seen it. Did you go inside it or something?”

“Yeah, the woods between here and the glass plant. It was late, and I was a lot younger, so when I heard that voice, well…I ran. There was no way I was going inside of it after I heard that.”

“Where exactly was this manhole? What did it look like? We should go check it out. Do you realize what this means? Maybe we can help my mom.”

“I don’t know exactly where it was, I had been running and crying. I did look inside of it. It was too dark to see anything, but I definitely heard the exact same voice calling from the hole.”

“How can you be sure it’s the same sound?”

“Because I hear it in my dreams all the time.”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me? Did you ever go back, you know, check it out in the daylight?”

“I am serious. I didn’t go back, because, well, that place scares me. The cover itself had the name of the glass plant on it, so I figured it led to the plant or something, though it was quite a ways out in the woods from the plant.”

“You do know my mom works there, right? She says she hates it though. She told us that we are never allowed to go there. She said it’s a bad place, though she won’t tell me why.”

“What did she mean, it’s a bad place?”

“I said she won’t tell me, but her and Dad fight about it all the time. Dad says he wants her to quit before something bad happens. Mom says she can’t afford to quit until he gets a real job. One time they had this really huge fight, and Mom said there were demons there, dancing in the furnace. Dad said he was gonna make her quit after that, but he never did. She also said this other time that if she left, the demons would come to get her. After that she started crying and Dad made her promise to go see a doctor, the special kind who fix people’s heads. She still goes every week. Dad said the pills the doctor gives her are supposed to make her better, but well, you saw what happened tonight. Do you think that if there is something like a demon out there, well, that maybe it’s why my mom gets weird? Like maybe there is way to make her better?”

“The only demons I ever heard of are in the Bible, but Miss Crowder told me there aren’t any more, because Jesus turned them into pigs. But I’ve never heard or seen anything like a demon, except for maybe that voice. So I don’t know, maybe.” Bobby glanced at the door and lowered his voice before continuing.

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know if I even believe in God, but if the sound she makes is the same you heard in the woods, well maybe there’s a way to help her get rid of her bad dreams.”

“Have you ever been inside the plant?”

“My mom took me once when I was a baby. At least she says she did, I was too young to remember. That was before things got bad, and like I said, Sarah and I are not allowed to go there now.”

“I wonder if…” Just then the door opened again—it was Bobby’s dad.

“Guys, you should get back to sleep, I can hear you talking, so Sarah probably can, too.”

“Okay, sorry Dad. We’ll be quiet.”

“Thanks Bobby. Remember your mom is making waffles. It’d be a shame if you didn’t get enough sleep to wake up in time to get some before I eat them all.”

“Fat chance!”

“Goodnight boys.”

The Thompson’s, despite their concerns about demons, never really went to church.  In northeast Oklahoma, ‘the buckle of the Bible-Belt’ as it has been called, almost everyone went to church.  Bobby had no clue that he and his family were missing out on one of the longest standing and most important social traditions in the state.  See, in places like Oklahoma, church is something you do regardless of what you believe about the Bible.  The majority of people who were churchgoers never even opened a Bible outside of church, though they would never miss a Sunday.  In fact, it’s social suicide in some elite circles in town to not belong to the right clique in the right church.  Furthermore, more business deals were made on Sunday and reported in Monday’s board meetings than vice-versa.  To not belong to any church was to put oneself, and one’s children, at a severe social disadvantage. 

   The Thompsons, who either did not know or care about the fact they were social outsiders, had not belonged to any fellowship for so long that Bobby could not even remember the last time he had been inside of a church, holidays included.  He had a vague idea, from kids at school, that there was a whole social phenomenon he was missing out on, but until becoming friends with Jim, he had no clue as to its scope and influence.  Jim’s church was interesting to Bobby particularly because of this Sunday school teacher Jim always talked about.  Evidently instead of boring bible stories, Jim’s teacher usually talked about current events and mass culture.  Jim said one time his teacher even used Star Wars to explain salvation.  Bobby didn’t understand how that made sense, but he definitely approved.  So once their friendship really started taking off, it wasn’t too long before Bobby started pestering his parents for permission to make the trip with the Claytons to the north side of town, to First Church at the corner of Lee and Elm.  One Sunday in the summer of 1982, his parents finally consented, on the condition that he didn’t try to make them go.

The seventh and eighth-grade boys’ Sunday school class was led by Greg Anders, one of the younger members of the ministry team at First Church.  He was also the only teacher to last longer than three months with Jim’s particular age group of boys.  And besides using popular culture and local history to relate scripture to the boys’ everyday life, Greg also made the point to develop a personal relationship with each of the boys.  It was in the context of individual relationships Greg performed most of his ministering to the boys.  This allowed class time to focus on bringing the boys together, and teaching them about the world they were growing up in.  Most of all, though, Greg genuinely had a passion for children and a desire to see them grow up with their Faith intact.  Consequently, the group grew together like a family, and visitors often came back again and again, even if they never stayed for the main service. 

Occasionally an older member of the church would rebuke Greg for not focusing on Godly things during class time and, as they would inevitably put it, catering to secular culture.  Greg always responded to this accusation by saying that God’s truths were everywhere, and that a tree should be judged by its fruit, not its soil.  More than once he had turned such conversations around on the person trying to rebuke him. This did not always work to his favor, and eventually it would make Greg too many enemies—but since Greg’s father, before he died, had been close with Roger Casey, the beloved senior minster of First Church, Greg had the support of the pulpit to run his class as he saw fit.  As long as the attendance numbers were high and there were no public incidents of defiance or irresponsibility, Roger supported and defended Greg’s methods.  

            This particular Sunday, when Bobby Thompson first came with Jim, Greg had brought a few articles and public records he wanted to share with the class.  “What’s in the folder, Greg?” asked Dustin Brown, who always came to class early so he could play foosball with his best friend, Shreve Quintin.  The two of them were nearly inseparable at that age.  Before Greg could answer, a burst of laughter sounded from the girls’ classroom next door.  This was common, and instantly the boys erupted into their usual mocking cacophony of falsetto laughter.  After the laughter subsided—both real and feigned—Greg answered Dustin’s question.

            “Oh…you know…just a few old articles and a little info I dug up from city records.  Stuff a lot of people would be surprised to find out…I thought we could talk a little about our own past this week.”

            “City records…really?  Sounds boring,” Dustin quipped back.  “I want to hear more about them smuggling people out of Germany like last week.  That was unbelievable.” 

            “Don’t underestimate your own history, Dustin.  Maybe our little page is far more complicated and fascinating than you know.”

            “I doubt it,” Dustin responded.                                      

“Don’t be a jerk, Dustin…so what are the records about?” asked Shreve as he left the foosball table and crossed the room to a chair.  Noticing Dustin’s look, he called back over his shoulder, “Don’t think you won.  We’ll finish after class.”

            “I don’t know if you will think it’s boring, but I found some stuff I thought was interesting.  We could just read from the book of Exodus though, if you aren’t interested.  How’s that sound?”  The room erupted with protests against that suggestion.  “Ok, so we’ll talk about the city records then.  But before I tell you what I found out, let me ask you guys: does anyone know how and why our town was founded?”

            “I know, weren’t there some kind of investors from Mississippi who paid to build the glass plant?”  Shreve ventured.

            “I thought the Liberty Brothers built the glass plant, aren’t they from here?  But I think he’s right though, the town really started with the glass plant.  Before that it was just a few settlers and the Creek Indians, right?” asked Randy, another one of the boys.

            “Wasn’t there a trading post, too?  Like some Indian trader guy?”  Shreve asked.

            “Yeah he was a chief or something,” said a boy named Micah.

“It was some sort of big deal though, when they built the glass plant, right?   ‘Cause they did it before the land run and just stole the land from the Creek Indians?  Didn’t they lie about when it was first built or something?” asked Dustin again. 

            “I think there were a lot of towns here before the land run, there had to be,” Randy said.

            “Yeah, but no big factories, or anything like that, and not without permission,” Dustin replied.

“My next door neighbor said that their name wasn’t even Liberty, but that they changed it to hide out from their relatives in Mississippi who they were afraid were after their money,” said Jim.

“Well you boys know more than I expected.  See, this is already interesting.  Let’s see if we can establish a few facts to clear things up.  Let’s think about it this way …what do you need to make glass?”  Greg asked.

            “Easy…sand…you melt sand.” Dustin replied.

            “Right!  Anything else?”

            “Do you even need anything else?” asked Shreve.  Greg shrugged, and looked around for an answer.

“Well you have to melt the sand, so you’d need a furnace or something, right?” Jim asked.  He looked at Bobby who was just watching everything, for now.

            “Okay good, Jim.  So…what would you do to melt sand in the late 19^th century when the plant was founded?”

            “Coal.  They used coal,” said Bobby, the first thing he had said since coming to class. 

            “That’s exactly right, Bobby, isn’t it?  Jim told me you might be joining us.  We’re glad to finally have you with us.  They use more natural gas these days for fuel, but coal was one of the most common fuels at that time.  Good job!  Let me ask, Bobby, did you already know that, or was it just a good guess?” asked Greg.

            “My mom works there, so I kinda knew already, also we studied it in school a few years ago.  And yeah, I came with Jim.  We live on the same street, just north of the woods around the plant.”

            “You live all the way down by the glass plant?  I didn’t know you lived on the south side, Jim.  Why did you guys pick a church all the way up here?  Not a lot of south-siders come all the way up here just for church.” Dustin asked.

            “It’s not that far, really…besides my mom grew up in this church.  My dad says he feels closest to her when we are here, so we still come,” Jim replied.  Dustin was getting at the fact that the south side was the older, and generally poorer, section of town. 

            “Alright, alright, drop it,” Greg interjected to maintain order, “Again, great job Bobby, you were right.  They used coal.  So explain this: why would two brothers from Mississippi want to come all the way to the middle of Indian territory just to build a glass plant?” 

            “I guess ‘cause they found a lot of sand here or something?  Or maybe they really hated Mississippi, I’ve only been there once and I hate it, it’s even hotter than here.” came the reply from Randy as the rest of the guys laughed.

            “Well, if that were true, wouldn’t there be a lot of sand or at least maybe a local source of coal around?  Have you guys ever seen or heard of any deposits of the kind of sand you need to make glass, or coal mines, or anything like that?  What about you guys, Jim and Bobby?  You live close to the plant, ever seen anything like that?”  The boys were quiet now.  They were thinking about it. 

            “Obviously the answer is no, but what does that mean?  Why did they build a glass plant here then?  It’s not like there were more rivers or railroad tracks that made shipping to and from here better than Mississippi, right?  It was before we were even a state, so probably the opposite, in fact.  They must have hated Mississippi.” said Jim.

            “I couldn’t figure the answer out for myself.  So that’s why I decided to do some research.  And that’s what led me to finding this here.”  He patted the folder he brought with him as he said this.

            “Well alright already, tell us…what do you got there?”  Dustin demanded.

            “Oh just some interesting old work records from the construction of the plant, along with a couple of sets of blueprints, which, interestingly enough are very different from each other.”  Jim and Bobby glanced at each other.

            “What do you mean, different from each other?”  Dustin asked.

            “There is an older set of blueprints I found in the old part of the library that shows a very different basement than these newer ones.”  Greg replied.  The room was silent as the boys imaginations considered the implications.

            “Uhm…isn’t the glass plant also the only building still standing that was built before the fire?” asked Bobby.

            “Right again Bobby, if you guys didn’t know, there was a fire in 1921 that destroyed almost the entire town, including the original court house and city hall.  And although part of it was destroyed in the fire, the glass plant is one of the only buildings that didn’t have to be condemned and torn down afterwards.”

            “How’d the fire start?” asked Dustin.

            “Oddly enough there are conflicting reports of that, too.  An article I found from a 1921 newspaper says it was a problem with the furnace at the glass plant, but that doesn’t make much sense, does it, if the plant was the only building to survive?”  They shook their heads.  “The official city records indicate it started in a private residence.  Put that contradiction together with the fact that the old blueprints of the glass plant show an elaborate basement, that is…well, a maze, and well…it makes one curious.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more I can’t think of one good reason why they would ever want or need such an elaborate basement, or why they’d waste the time and resources in the first place.  I’m almost tempted to believe there never was such a basement, but look for yourselves,” here he opened the blueprints, “there it is…and furthermore there are a couple of rooms hidden in the middle of the whole thing.”  Greg pulled out the other set of blueprints and showed the boys the differences.  “The funny thing is, if you notice, the rooms are labeled as sand room and office.  Now why would rooms like that be put in the middle of some weird labyrinth?”

            “So you had to go through a maze to get more sand or do paperwork? What about the furnace?  Where is that?” asked Bobby.

            “It is not clear on these plans.  But it looks like it wasn’t even accessible from the basement, though some parts are pretty badly faded or stained, which is another thing, this older copy saw a lot of use at one time, which makes me want to think it’s accurate, because someone used it for something.  If you look at the newer blueprints, from after the fire, they show some parts exactly the same, but others are changed or just completely missing.  See how there is a tiny basement that ends right at the edge of where the maze should be?  Does that mean there is a closed off section of the basement that no one has been in for decades?”

            “So, okay, it’s confusing…but what do we care?  I don’t get it.  The Liberty Brothers liked mazes? Or were worried someone would steal their sand?  Maybe they were just paranoid, or maybe there really were people from Mississippi?  But don’t these new blueprints prove whatever it was, it’s been destroyed or out of commission for years and years?” asked Randy.

            “Who knows, maybe the basement was destroyed in the fire, or maybe the fire was an excuse to make it appear like it was destroyed.  Why would there be different accounts of where and how the fire began if there wasn’t at least some sort of a cover up?  Another thing, you were right, Jim—Liberty wasn’t the brothers who built the plant’s real last name.  They took it when they moved here. I think they definitely had something to hide.  I’ve not been able to find any record of what their name really was, but there are several articles from papers around the turn of the century where they were in trouble for accidents that kept happening in the plant that resulted in worker’s injuries and even deaths.  It came out that no one really knew who they were or where they came from.  They just seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.  Why build a maze to keep your business from being burglarized—it was only sand, right?  So it should have only taken a lock, and maybe a night watchman, to keep it safe, right?  Let’s review what we know:  two brothers of questionable background from Mississippi arrive in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, and, though there is no sand in sight, they establish one of the most successful glass plants the state has ever seen.  It was so successful, in fact, that a thriving city grew up around it.  Furthermore, this highly successful plant had a huge labyrinthine basement that may or may not have been destroyed nearly seventy years ago.”

            “Okay, but what Randy said, what does it mean to us?  Why are we talking about it right now?  How does any of this have any bearing on our lives today?”  Dustin interjected. 

            “Think about it, whatever they have, or had, in that basement must be how they’ve got the glass necessary to support our economy for almost a hundred years.  I tried to find records of inbound sand shipments, and there are none, check it out for yourselves, ask around.  The bottom line is, the whole reason we know each other and are all sitting here today is because of that plant, it kept this city alive through the fire, through the twister of thirty-nine¸ even during the sixties when Reverend Chief Hightower terrorized and killed people, that plant kept this place alive.  If it wasn’t here, we’d all live in Tulsa—all of us.  The university would have been founded there instead of here.  Our airport would have closed down years ago, even the West Hills Mall would have gone out of business.”  Greg pointed out.

            “So you are saying the whole reason our life here is possible is…well…is a big mystery, I guess?  If that’s so, why hasn’t anyone tried to go into the basement, or why hasn’t anyone said anything about the fact the plant makes the glass without any sand?   You can’t be the only person to ever realize the plant never bought any sand.” asked Bobby.

            “Well, the truth is, the world doesn’t always work the way you might think.  First off, very few people in town ever had reason to know about the old basement at all.  I only know because I went snooping in parts of the library I wasn’t even supposed to be in.  Second, people who keep things behind locked doors do so for a reason.  When you go snooping where you aren’t supposed to, you often learn things you’d rather not have known.  And third, if it’s making money, then it ain’t broke.  Why look a gift horse in the mouth when it’s the only thing keeping a roof over your head?  Believe me, in business, making money is all that matters, period.  Imagine what would have happened if the plant hadn’t been here.”

            “So do you know what was in, or is in those rooms in the basement?” Dustin asked.

            “No Dustin, I don’t.  I really don’t think anyone does, except for maybe a few people at the plant.  But whatever it is, well, it has to answer the question of how they are able to make glass.  Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention…I also found out during my snooping that the basement was off limits to all employees or anyone else other than senior management.   They had, and still have as far as I can figure out, the authority to shoot any unauthorized person in the basement on sight.  Anyone, employee or not, who goes into that basement is considered a trespasser.” 

            “Really?  Employees, too?  That’s insane!  How could that be true? I’ve never heard of anything like that before.  Have they ever actually shot anyone down there?” asked Dustin.

            “Well…” Jim started, everyone looked at him expectantly, “Mine and Bobby’s neighbor across the street, Carla Carter…uhm, her dad died in the glass plant basement.  But my dad said it was a suicide, but who knows.”  Silence followed as the boys considered this new revelation.

“Sadly, I’ve heard similar stories.  Mary Lou Wilson’s older brother died under mysterious circumstances while on shift at the plant.  Erasmus Hummingbird’s twin brother also died there and whatever happened, it had to be a closed casket.  There are other stories too, just dig a little and they start popping up all over.”  The room grew even more silent.  “I told you our own history is just as interesting as anywhere else’s, Dustin,” Greg added.

“So why bring this up today?”  Randy asked.

 “Honestly, I’d meant to bring it up before, but I wasn’t sure how you boys would respond to it.  It’s pretty heavy stuff, and there are a lot of people older than me who, when I asked what they knew, wouldn’t say a word and told me to mind my own business.  I guess I felt like I had a duty to pass this stuff on to someone before all the secrets and mysteries of our past die with the older generations.  Too often we lose contact with our own history and are the worse for it.  For good or bad, this is our story guys, and as a wiser man than myself once said, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.”

“What’s it got to do with the Bible?” asked Bobby.

“Not as much as it has to do with faith.  If something that happened so close in time and place to our own moment in history can be shrouded with such confusion and possible misinformation, how can we be sure about anything without God’s authority?  I really wanted you guys to understand everything in this world, and I do mean everything, is a mystery.  That’s why the Bible is so important—it is God’s way of giving us one thing we can believe in without having to doubt it the way we sometimes have to doubt even the most seemingly innocuous events in our everyday lives.”

“This is the weirdest Sunday School lesson I’ve ever heard of.” Bobby commented.

“Not everything we talk about in class directly relates to scripture, Bobby.  I know that might seem strange, but you guys are in the process of becoming adults, and it’s important you grow to become men of integrity and insight so you can see the truth about things that others would keep from you.  Jesus said the truth will set you free, so we should seek the truth in all things.  Besides, this stuff is about the most fascinating story I’ve ever heard about our town, don’t you think?”

“Okay…I guess.”  Bobby was obviously confused. 

“Look, the bottom line is we will probably never know if the basement still exists, or if it ever really did.  I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, or met anyone who has personally been in the basement.  In a way, I believe it, and in a way, I don’t.  I think that can sum up the same way we feel about most things in life.  Wherever you are, the whole story of life is waiting to be discovered, even in the smallest, seemingly most mundane details, and ultimately it’s all up to you to decide what you believe…we all write our own stories out of the details of this life.  There is beauty in the midst of disaster, tragedy in the midst of bliss, and salvation in the midst of damnation.  When you boys become men, you will eventually decide what you believe about all the mysteries of this world, and if you are not careful, that decision will be made for you…which is something I really don’t want to see happen.  I want you all to think for yourselves as early on as possible because I wasted far too much of life letting others think for me.”  Greg added as he began to pack up his papers.

            “My mom says there is a basement.  She says she has been there.”  Everyone turned and looked at Bobby.  Jim squirmed uncomfortably, remembering the manhole and Bobby’s sleepwalking mother.  He was nervous about where the conversation would go next.

            “Really?  Your mom’s been in the basement?  Well is it a maze?”  Dustin probed.  Bobby looked at Jim for support.

            “She works there, but she’s never said anything about a maze, has she Bobby?” Jim offered.  Bobby shook his head to confirm Jim’s statement just as the bell rang signaling that the main service would begin in a five minutes.  Everyone suddenly got up at that point, so Bobby was off the hook.

            Greg raised his voice to be heard over the commotion, “Ok, well, sorry we didn’t cover today’s scripture, but we will next week.  Be good to yourselves this week guys, and remember you can call me anytime you need anything.  Oh and Bobby, thanks again for joining us today.  I know we do things differently than most classes.  I hope it wasn’t too weird for a first time visitor.”

“No, I thought it was very interesting.”  Bobby responded.   

“Well, I’d love to have you back anytime.  Here’s my number if you ever need a ride or just want to talk.  I’d be happy to pick you up for church anytime the Clayton’s aren’t available.  Also, if you ever just need someone to hang out with, that’s fine too.  It’s always good to make new friends.”  Greg shook Bobby’s hand.  Bobby hesitated as Jim was heading out the door.  Jim noticed.

            “Bobby we gotta go or we’re gonna be late to service,” Jim prompted.

            “I…uh…wanted to ask Greg something, is it okay if I catch up with you?”  Jim looked bewildered and glanced at Greg.

            “It’s fine Jim, I will show him where to go.  I’ll explain if we’re late, you won’t be in trouble,” Greg reassured.  Jim wanted to stay, but it was obvious Bobby wanted to be alone with Greg, so he left.  Once they were alone, Greg turned to Bobby who was looking at the ground, “What did you want to talk about, Bobby?”

-3-

Sorrow, sorrow on sorrow inconsolable,

and a throbbing pain that cannot be assuaged.

If there be cure, it must come from within these walls.

Desperate remedies, drastic measures—blood,

flowing through time in powerful tides. Oh, gods,

and you, the blessed dead, protect us, help us,

help these children sent forth into a world

of evil and peril and woe.

All of you down below,

be with them as they go.

- Aeschylus[1]

[1] Taken from The Libation Bearers, part of Aeschylus’s Oresteia.

About that night, THE night, well, the truth is I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do when I left your room.  I just knew it all had to stop.  I don’t know if you remember what you asked me just before I went to the plant—how did I know I wasn’t making a horrible mistake?  The truth was, even though I knew I had to destroy that place and you were just a child, I should have listened.  It didn’t have to be done right then, not like that.  I could have made sure the place was empty at least, I should have protected the people who worked there too, not just let them die.  And like I said already, that’s something I will always have to live with.  I didn’t have it all figured out, I didn’t really have anything figured out.  I just was in such a hurry, I am sorry I didn’t listen, I am sorry I did what I did, there was a better way, once… 

Becky, no one really knew, but terrible things happened at that plant, things I don’t even really understand and could never explain, and I knew I had to stop it—that was all that mattered—I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  It’s not an excuse for running out on you like I did, it’s just the truth.  I wish it hadn’t fallen to me to do it, but it did, and I’m sorry that I let it take me away from you.  There once was a better way, though the path we took is not the worst, not so bad as to hate, right?  Do you hate me? 

Hindsight is so clear—it’s so easy to see now that when I came back home, when I took the job at the church, all I was doing was running—maybe a different kind of running, but still—running—same as always. I thought I wasn’t—I thought I had quit, but I can see now that I had been running in one way or another since the day you were born.  For so long running was all I knew how to do.  Miss Crowder told me so, but I didn’t listen.   I am sorry for what I put you through—forcing you into a life you never had a choice about.  I know how bad I let you down, and I am sorrier for that than anything else.    The plant had ruined the Thompson’s lives, and as much as I thought I was keeping it from ruining ours, well now I know that just wasn’t true.  I may have protected a lot of strangers, but I didn’t protect you.  I had no right to sacrifice our relationship like that. I was all you had, and I failed you.  I am sorry I broke my promise about never leaving you.  I am sorry I abandoned you, if I could come back and take you away, I would…believe me, I would…

Not long after that Sunday, Bobby and Jim made a secret vow to sneak into the basement of the Liberty Brothers Glass Plant to see if the supposed hundred year old labyrinth really existed.  The threat of being shot on sight, though neither of them really believed such a thing was possible, only heightened their excitement.  They planned their expedition with the same secrecy and stealth they had planned dozens of other play missions.  The fact that they had graduated from playing at subterfuge to the actual act was never mentioned—was hardly even considered.  It took them a while to get everything set.  Bobby had been very insistent that his parents, or any adults for that matter, knew nothing.  Jim, after what he had seen when he stayed the night a few years back, wholeheartedly agreed.  So they had to make preparations when no one was around, and under the cover of night.  Their plan was to camp out behind the Thompson’s place, on the edge of the woods, as a cover.  They would set up their tent on the edge of the yard facing the woods, just past the outer limit of the always-on-porch-light’s beam. 

They made a list and gathered supplies they might need during their descent into the bowels of the glass plant—a rope, a pair of brand new flashlights, a couple of pocket knives, gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, a portable tape recorder with four, fresh, “D” batteries, ski masks to hide their identity should they be caught, and the old basement map that Greg Anders had found.  Bobby had talked him into letting him borrow it, although he never told him about the manhole or their plan to explore it themselves.  The tape recorder was there to make an audio recording of the voice in order to convince a potential third party that there was a connection between Bobby’s mom’s behavior and the plant.  Bobby hoped with such a recording he could clear his mom’s name and maybe get her to quit the plant for good. 

            It was a Friday night when they finally set up camp.  Once everything was in order, they settled down to wait until everyone was asleep.  The crickets seemed unusually loud to the boys that night, everything seemed slightly different, slightly more real.  The night air had hardly cooled off from the heat of the day.  Sweat ran down Jim’s back as he pulled off his shirt.  He looked at the stars—they seemed so close he could almost grab them.  Bobby silently ate one of the sandwiches Miss Crowder had made the boys for their campout as he double and triple checked the flashlights.  The boys were restless, anxious, and underneath it all, frightened.  Finally, after what seemed like years, the lights went out in the Thompson’s house.

            “One down, two to go,” Jim said indicating the other houses on the street.  The Carter’s duplex lights were on, as was the light in Miss Crowder’s room.  The rest of the houses had no line of sight with the boy’s tent, so they didn’t matter.   

As the boys waited in silence, Jim’s gaze turned from the Thompson’s to the Crowder’s, next door.  Miss Crowder’s bedroom was the only lit window.   He recognized the faint glow of her reading lamp.  He pictured her sitting in bed reading, her old fashioned nightcap and gown looking as uncomfortable and hot as ever.  Jim, who hated to wear anything except shorts to bed, never understood how anyone could wear so much clothing on the hot summer nights that seemed to last for so long.  The other blackened windows looked like empty eye-sockets staring back at Jim.  Noticing Jim’s gaze, Bobby interrupted Jim’s musings, “Have you ever been in there?  Is she really crazy?”

 “Are you serious?  Miss Crowder?  I’ve spent the night there almost more times than I have my own house.  Haven’t you seen us over there, like all the time?  She has babysat me and Becky tons since my dad has sort of lost interest.  And she’s not crazy at all.  Have you really never been over there?  Her house is huge with tons of rooms to explore.  You know she’s the one who made the sandwiches.”

“Really?  Well they are great. I love tuna.  I guess I have seen you over there, when I think about it.  My dad’s the one that said she’s crazy.  He says the Crowder’s are rich people and that they all left her behind because something was wrong with her in the head.  She brought me a present on my birthday once, but my dad wouldn’t let me keep it, he got rid of it.  It was a book.  I never found out how she knew when my birthday was.”

“Carla Carter probably told her, they talk sometimes.  Well, more like gossip.  Her parents were rich, so I guess she is too.  When her mom ran off with some salesman, Miss Crowder was still very young.  I’ve never really known exactly why her mom didn’t come back to get her when her dad died, but I kinda got the idea from what I’ve heard that her mother wasn’t exactly good at being a mom.  Still though, she’s one of the nicest ladies I’ve ever met.  My dad said she reads a lot ‘cause she’s lonely, which is probably what she’s doing right now.  Wonder why your dad said she’s crazy.”

“I don’t know.  I’ve always been a little scared of her, she looks so old and wrinkled.  Wonder what she does all alone in such a big house, I mean, she can’t read all the time.  My dad said she’s never even had a boyfriend.  If there’s not something wrong with her, why would stay there all alone and never get married?”

“All old people look funny, I see a lot of them at church.  Carla Carter said she stayed ‘cause she had no place to go, and of course because she is pretty close with my family, she always has been.  She’s really the only mom Becky’s ever known.   I don’t know what would have happened to Becky if she hadn’t been around when my mom died.  She really isn’t scary or weird at all.  She knows a lot about all kinds of stuff, you should talk to her…she always has cookies too, and she is good at all kinds of games.”  Just then Miss Crowder’s light switched off. 

“Two down.” Jim noted.

“Three, actually,” the Carter’s lights had gone out without the boys noticing.

Their plan was simple: descend into the darkness, try to find the source of the sound and/or the maze and get back out before anyone catches them.  The boys had no clue what they might find, but they knew, even though they hadn’t said it, what they were about to do was dangerous.  Jim checked his watch, not because he needed to know the time, but because he thought it was something one should do at important moments.  The clock read quarter ‘til midnight.  Jim stood up suddenly with a grin.  He looked at Bobby as his eyes sparkled with mischief while in a confidential tone he asked, “Well, what do you think?  This is the most important mission ever—everything else has led to this—everything.”  Jim didn’t mean that statement to be as profound as it would turn out to be.  He was just an adolescent boy playing at being an adult.

            Bobby put his hand on Jim’s shoulder fervently and said, “Everything we’ve fought and trained for is this moment right here.  We’re ready.”  He let go and grinned as he grabbed his backpack.  In a much lighter and playful tone he continued, “Infiltrating such a complex and well-defended enemy base might require time, and if word of our plans have leaked…we could face certain death.”  Jim was grabbing his gear as he nodded his assent.  He stuffed a cupcake from Bobby’s mom into his mouth as he zipped his backpack.

            “Bring it on,” he said through a mouthful of frosting.

            The pair of boys crawled carefully and purposefully out of the backyards of their childhood and into the woods of knowledge, and pain.  It was late in the summer of 1982, and although no one else would ever exactly know the details of what happened that night, their journey into the dark sparked a chain of events that eventually changed everything—everything for nearly everybody in their relatively unknown and appropriately mythic piece of land nestled deep in the trees and rivers of a place called Oklahoma.  They were children playing a game that was no game in a place that was no place for children. 

Once they were mobile, the boys moved quickly and quietly through the underbrush.  There was no light from the street, but they kept low all the same.  The crickets chirped louder and the twigs they stepped on seemed to boom instead of snap.  But no sound was as loud as the thumping of their hearts which seemed to envelope even the ubiquitous rustling and whispering of the trees, the trees…the trees that always watched, always listened.  The boys both heard everything and nothing.  They moved by design more or less directly towards the manhole.  Jim had not been back since he first discovered the manhole, but Bobby had re-located it for them not long ago, so Bobby led the way.  Once he felt they were far enough from the street, Jim switched on his flashlight.  Bobby followed suit, but still, neither one broke the silence that had sprung up upon entering the woods.  The playfulness that had given them confidence minutes earlier was all but gone.  Eventually the whir-like hum of the machines emerged from the woods to guide them towards the plant in the distance. 

The trees in the woods looked different the deeper they went.  They started appearing at various and bizarre angles as if they had been bent and twisted against their nature by unseen hands larger and more powerful than any human.  Like all the trees in the forest, they whispered in the wind about the two boys in their midst who sought secrets even they, who were impervious to the curses that plagued men, dared not reveal.  Jim felt their eyes on him, though he knew not what watched him, and quickened his pace enough to pass Bobby. 

            After a time the boys found the clearing just beyond the rise in the woods.  They could make out the manhole cover clearly in the moonlight.  It was still exactly where Jim had left it years before.  For all Jim could tell it had not even been moved an inch.  The wind grew louder suddenly and then just as quickly died down.  The crickets faltered and grew fearfully silent.  The hum of the plant seemed the only sound that did not diminish.  It had, instead, grown into a rumble.  They had reached the point of no return and the reality of climbing into that hole in the woods in the dark bullied the boys into uncertainty.  They stood on either side of the hole, cautiously peering into the blackness from which the frightening inhuman plea had come.  The hum from the plant pulsed even louder in the distance, coming closer then fading…closer then fading.  The throbbing feeling of dread in Jim’s heart mimicked the hum of the plant as together the two sounds rose and fell.  Together they drowned out the one reoccurring word in his mind: run.  Jim, though, was frozen—his eyes were transfixed on the hole he had seen so many times in his dreams.  Both boys peered into the inky darkness at their feet.  Bobby glanced seriously at Jim before he pointed his flashlight into the hole.  Together, the boys took their first glimpse into the darkness.

            Rungs of an old metal ladder were imbedded in the stone wall.  They gleamed in the beam of the flashlight as they descended the twelve or so feet to the floor of what looked like a drainage or sewage tunnel.  The floor, or more exactly, whatever slimily stuff covered it, brightly reflected the beam of the flashlight as well.  The room below proved to be a narrow tunnel.  The boys looked to see how far it went either way by having Bobby lie on his stomach and lean his arms and head into the hole with the flashlight.  One end, that heading away from the plant, abruptly dead-ended in a few feet.  Bobby turned to look the other way.  His flashlight swept down a long, empty hallway until its beam grew too weak to illuminate any further.  He saw nothing, no end, no objects, no human, no creature—nothing.  But, as the beam penetrated the tunnel, a familiar call came echoing down the tunnel towards the boys.

“That’s it! Can you see anything?” Jim asked excitedly. He fought back the feeling of panic that nagged at his stomach.  The presence of Bobby helped him remain calm, but not as much as Jim had hoped it would.   Whatever made that sound was in misery, and its bitter despair bit into Jim’s spirit—his spirit shrank. 

“Man, turn on the recorder already!  My dad has to hear this…this proves my mom is not crazy, this proves this place is the problem!”  Hearing the same sound here reassured Bobby and provided him with newfound courage and determination.  He had been frightened of that voice for so long and now, all he felt was anger and bitterness, he wanted to smash whoever or whatever made that call.  “Let’s go, now! No more waiting.”    

“Okay, I’m ready,” Jim said, as Bobby’s confidence transferred itself to him.  “Let’s go,” he agreed.  Bobby nodded.

“I have to find out what happened to my mom.  I’ve hated her for so long.  I mean, I guess I thought I believed you and all, but, now I know for sure that…” Bobby faltered as he was distracted by another call from below.  Jim put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder. 

“It’s okay, I understand.  Like I said, this one’s for keeps.  So, you goin’ already, or am I gonna have to shove you out of the way?” He asked.
            “You go first, I am gonna get the tape recorder ready.  But listen, be careful, okay?  Those rungs look slippery.”

“Worry about yourself, I’m not the one carrying a tape recorder,” Jim said as he clicked his light off, fastened it to his belt, and began his descent into the darkness.  Bobby stood there for a moment, making sure he was able to record.  Jim called up to him to hurry so Bobby, after one last look around, followed Jim into the heart of darkness.

...time passed…

The trees held their breath.  One hour, two, three…

…more time passed…

Finally, many hours later, the sound of running footsteps echoed from the hole.  Then a boy’s head peeked out just before the rest of his body scrambled up the ladder and out as fast as possible.  It was Bobby.  He slipped on the rungs as he took his last step and fell flat.  The slip caused him to drop his backpack as he used the hand holding it to steady himself.  The backpack toppled down to the slime below.  “Jim! Look out, I dropped my bag. Will you grab it for me?”  There was no response, so Bobby continued, “Jim! Where are you? This isn’t cool.  Where are you?”  He leaned his head in and listened, but instead of Jim, he heard the familiar scream echoing from the distance.  His hair stood on end, his heart began to beat even faster.  “Jim! Are you there?  Where are you?”  He listened, but still, nothing.  Wherever Jim was, whatever he was doing, he either couldn’t hear Bobby or couldn’t answer him.  Bobby felt like his heart would beat through his chest.  The backpack below him contained the tape recorder, but he could not bring himself to go back for it.  His friend was down there somewhere too, but still, he could not bring himself to go back.  He cried tears of frustration, fear and exhaustion.  He was angry and filled with shame at his cowardice.  He shook with fear for his friend.  He climbed to his feet, took a few tentative steps, and then plunged into the woods in the direction of home—the direction of his lost innocence.

A half an hour later Jim’s footsteps could finally be heard in the clearing.  He had reached the ladder and was still whole.  He was panting so hard and moving so quickly he never noticed Bobby’s bag lying in the dark.  “Bobby?” he called at the hole above his head before climbing.  He paused to catch his breath before asking, “Are you there?”  Behind him the sounds of heavy footsteps and a frighteningly human snarl approached.  Jim took one last look in the direction of the footsteps and then scrambled up the ladder. 

Once he was outside the hole, he called once more for Bobby, but there was no response.  As he yelled, he grabbed the cover and furiously pushed it up and back over on top of the hole.  He didn’t stay to see if anything else came up the ladder—he ran.  He ran all the way back to South Adams.  When he finally crossed the dry stream bed he headed straight for his house, not the Thompson’s.  As he ran past Miss Crowder’s he somehow noticed her reading light was back on, and for a moment felt the desire to run to her and let her comfort him.  Somewhere deep inside him though, Jim knew that she would never be able to comfort him in that way again.  Instead he headed towards Becky—the person he usually held and gave comfort to.

Once inside his own home he slammed the door and locked it.  Then he slumped to the floor with exhaustion, collapsing into a panting, sobbing heap.  He did not know how long he had been lying there when he realized he was not alone.  He jerked his head up just as he heard a small voice call his name. He knew who it was before he even heard the sound of her voice. 

“Jim?”  He was upset that she saw him this way—before he had dried his tears—but then, suddenly, he cried even harder.  She was standing in her night gown, holding her blanket, and staring at him through her sleepy and frightened eyes. 

“Oh Becky…I’m sorry, honey…I didn’t mean to make so much noise.  Everything’s okay.  I’m okay.  Sorry to wake you,” he tried to dry his eyes, “Want me to tuck you back into bed?”  Becky continued to look at him and then came up, sat down, and put her head in his lap like she had done more times than either could remember.

“Why you crying, Jimmy?” She asked sleepily.  “Are you hurt?”  She patted his leg softly with her little hand.  Jim stared at the lines from where her bedspread had embedded into the skin of her hand while she slept.  Her hand was so little, so vulnerable, he thought. 

“I’m not hurt. I’m okay.”

“Then why you crying?”  Jim waited a moment before answering.

“Something very bad happened, Becky, but not to me, we are okay.  Don’t worry, we are okay.”  She looked up at him, so he continued quickly before she saw how scared he was, “Tell you what Becky, I will tell you about it later, but for now let’s just go upstairs and go to sleep.  I’m tired and I’m sure you are too, aren’t you?”  She shook her head no.  “Well how about this, how about if you promise to go to back to bed now, I’ll make you oatmeal in the morning and you can put all the syrup in it you want.  Sound good?”  Jim always bribed his sister with her favorite foods, and, surprisingly, it was very effective.  His sister smiled despite her obvious worry and confusion, and nodded. “Good.  Oatmeal it is, and I’ll cook bacon so that maybe Dad will eat with us too.  I’ll ask him.  How’s that sound?”  Becky’s smile won out over her worries.

“Can I sit on his lap?”  She asked hopefully.

“Maybe, we’ll see in the morning,” was all Jim said as picked her up gently and carried her to bed.

“You will ask him?”

“Yes, I promise.”  He fought off the now overwhelming feeling of exhaustion as he tucked her in.  He nearly fell on her when he bent to kiss her forehead, he was so weak.  Once her eyes closed, his body gave out.  He sat down on the floor, and lacking the strength to even make it back on his feet, he slept away what was left of the night right there on his sister’s bedroom floor.

There was a long line of figures huddled in dark, formless overcoats which protected them from the steady rain as they stood against the brick edifice of the largest building on Sheridan Blvd.  They stood in the rain because there was an open call for workers at the paper factory.  Some were there for the warehouse jobs, some for production room jobs, and still others were applying for openings in the administrative wing.  Jim Clayton leaned out of line to see how much longer he had to wait in the rain.  He had no clue what job he would apply for when it became his turn.  A feeling of being misplaced, colored by an old shame, nagged Jim as he stood among strangers in the rain.  When he had left Oklahoma a year or so ago, he told his sister it was to find a place where he felt like he belonged, but no place he had been or lived since he left made him feel close to anything.  If Jim had been in the habit of being honest with himself, he’d admit that the brick building on Sheridan was the loneliest place he had been yet, and that the idea of working there turned his stomach into knots. 

Jim, however, was in the habit of running.  He checked his watch and wound it to give him something to do.  Jim always imagined he looked important when consulting his watch, just like a businessman he had seen in a commercial at some time or another during his childhood.  Jim was proud of his watch; it was very expensive and had belonged to Miss Crowder’s father.  She gave it to him just before he left Oklahoma, just before Bobby was taken away.  The thought of that old woman all alone in her big house threatened to let loose a flood of memories and emotion—a flood he had been trying to outrun for a year.    His face contorted into a grimace of self-loathing that was all too familiar on his face for a boy of just eighteen. 

Someone behind him in line commented about how they all would be soaked before they had a chance to interview.  The comment brought Jim back into the moment.  He glanced at the overcast sky where the drizzle showed no signs of letting up and nodded his agreement.  As the rain and cold seeped through his clothes and into his skin, so did the old feelings of being wrong and out-of-place.  He glanced at the building above looming overhead to focus himself in the moment.  It was a large, redbrick, rectangular building with too-small windows, and too-plain décor.  It lacked anything resembling a soul.  Jim shuddered.  How can people work in a place so menacing and soulless, he thought as he scanned the rest of the buildings along the block.  The bleak exterior was mirrored down the boulevard.  Heavy thoughts of meaninglessness and emptiness reflected from the skyline and crowded in upon Jim.  Once again, the question of why he was even there in the first place loomed largely in his mind.

            He wondered what Becky was doing at that exact moment.  He liked to imagine her sitting on the porch on hot summer evenings, asking silly questions like always, continually playing with the ripped out knees of all her pants or throwing rocks into the yard.  He didn’t like to think of her living alone without him in the house on South Adams.  The fact his father was still alive and technically living there with her provided Jim no comfort.  He had been so busy with dying ever since his wife passed away that the daughter she died to conceive was little more for him than her reincarnated ghost come back to torture him for being the one that lived.  His father hadn’t been alive enough to see Becky, or himself for that matter, her entire life.  Jim’s throat caught, he hated that.

He walked forward as two or three more guys were let inside and out of the rain.  Jim had no clue how far the line continued inside.  He stopped again beneath a window that evidently opened into the production room.  The sound of the motors turning wood into paper reminded Jim of the glass plant back home.  Everything reminded Jim of the glass plant.  He could keep his mind off of it for a while, but once it crept back into his consciousness, it was always the same:  he’d think of Bobby Thompson.  He’d wonder where Bobby was now and if Bobby ever thought of him.  Then his mind would circle, inevitably, back to the night they had snuck into the glass plant, to the real reason he ran.  Jim didn’t understand the true nature of what they had found, but it was in his every dream—and then it would rise up all over again, the fear, the old fear, the original fear, the fear to which all others paled for Jim Clayton.  The fear he had done his best to learn how to deal with until he found out about Bobby’s mother, and then, he ran.  In his mind, in his heart, in reality, whichever way he could—he ran. 

The line moved again, oh-so-slowly.  Jim swallowed to slow his rising heart rate.  Just breathe, breathe, you idiot.  He looked around as he felt the line somehow closing in on him.  He looked ahead—the door was close now.  The thought of going inside, of all those wet coats, of the smell of the paper, of the sound of the machines, made his stomach hurt.  He placed a hand on the wall.  I was just a boy, how could it happen to me, too?  I only went down there once!  He demanded of no one in particular.  He loathed the door to the interior of the paper plant as it drew closer.  He tried to shudder off the panic attack he knew was mounting, breathe. The rain was steadily soaking every last piece of clothing he had on.  He checked his watch again to give him something to focus on.  He imagined the smell that would confront him once he was inside.  He was going to be sick.  He bent down, putting his head between his legs and resting against the building.  That helped.  The guy behind him asked if he was okay.  Jim said it was just nerves about the interview. 

Crouched and bent over in the rain, he thought of Miss Crowder all alone in her room.  He imagined that she had finally nailed herself up in there like he had read Rosa Coldfield’s dad had.  He imagined the story as if it were Miss Crowder and Becky—Becky sneaking food through a window to Miss Crowder like Rosa had done for her father once he nailed himself in.  Jim looked up, from the position his head was in, at his feet.  He noticed how new the sidewalk was, whole and unbroken, so unlike home.  Small eddies formed in the current as the water rushed about the soles of his shoes.  His feet were the only part of him that was not completely soaked yet.  He could get out of here before he had to go in the door—there was a little time still, he told himself.  He stood up, the blood rushed back out of his head—he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling.  He used his watch to focus again, steadying his breathing.

            Time slowed with his breathing.  He listened to the sound of water falling as if there was something hidden in the rain.  He thought again of the father who had grown more and more absent since his mother died.  He thought of him sleeping at his office at the University, or who knows where, instead of coming home to his children.  He thought of the struggle he watched his father have with himself as he tried to erase the painful reminders of what he had lost.  Reminders which were everywhere in the only house his dad had ever lived in.  Jim used to be angry at his father for this, but now he only felt sorry for him.  He knew he was no better.  He could see clearly how they were all broken in one way or another, all of them except Becky.  She had somehow, in her innocence, not figured out she was growing up among ghosts and worse and should therefore hate everything.  The Oklahoma of his past was so far away and yet still within him.

            The line slowly moved again.  It would soon be Jim’s turn to go through the door.  He thought again that he had to get out of there and a panic fluttered for a moment in his chest.  He told himself that he had no reason to be standing in the rain in a small town in the middle of Ohio.  He hated Ohio even more than Oklahoma.  He hated the fact he was here because he was running.  He hated the fear that controlled him—he hated that he was in this position.  He hated it was his life, that he felt like he never had any choice about it all.  It was all so unfair, he was just a kid, everyone makes mistakes, and he never told anyone anything, so he was safe, right?  What more could be asked of him?  That was the question that pricked his conscience so thoroughly on that rain-soaked day.  The truth was, in his heart, Jim knew the answer to that question—he knew he had to go back.  If he would have allowed himself to think about, Jim even knew what had to be done, what he himself had to do.  But certain realizations take growing into, and until now all Jim could admit was how he missed his old life and how it was so unfair. 

There, in the rain, waiting to interview for a job he didn’t even want in the first place, it dawned on Jim for the first time why he really ran. He had always thought he ran from his past, from the horrible things he had seen on that night.  But now he began to see that it was what he had to do, and not what had already happened that he was running from.  He realized his dread resulted from the fact that he had tried to believe that such a thing could not be asked of someone like him, of someone so young, of someone who never meant harm to anyone, ever.  How could someone like him do something so big?  He was barely even eighteen; that place was ancient.  But somehow he finally understood how childish the question of fairness was.  Why me?  He asked himself, but even as he asked it, he knew the answer to that question:  because he was the one who couldn’t live with not doing it.  Once the idea settled firmly in his mind, other questions came: How was he supposed to get away with it? What if someone got hurt? What would Becky think if he did it?  What would happen to her if he didn’t do it?

He wrestled with his conscience.  The rain came down even harder, which, now, helped to calm him. Jim controlled his breathing and thought back to that first morning at church when Greg Anders had told them all about the basement at the glass plant.  At the time it had seemed hardly more than another one of Greg’s fascinating conspiracy theories.  Jim never talked to Greg about what he and Bobby had found in the plant, but somehow he got the feeling that Greg knew.  Jim missed Greg, and hated how he had been held responsible for what Bobby did to his mom.  A part of Jim longed to go back to that Sunday morning when it all seemed so exciting and mysterious.  His heart ached for his lost innocence and freedom, but he knew deep inside that the only way he could ever reclaim even a part of what he had lost was to go back home.  It had taken a year to realize, or maybe the word was admit, it, but Jim knew he would never know any freedom or find any semblance of peace until he had made sure the secret Bobby’s mom died for, the secret to which all their pasts were chained, the secret that had ruined who knows how many lives, the secret that had been protected for far too long, was destroyed—not revealed—but destroyed.  It had to end.  He couldn’t leave it up to anyone else.  He had to make sure that that place would never hurt anyone else, ever again.  The hair on Jim’s neck and arms stood on end with purpose.  For the first time he knew what he had to do, and he knew he could do it.  He felt something he had not felt for a long time: hope.  He felt the power of hope and he knew for the first time it was not he who should be afraid, but rather it was he that should be feared.  He took one last look at the door and left his place in line for good. It would be a struggle to see it through, to maintain his determination, but he knew he had to try.  Jim Clayton no longer ran.  Instead, he walked—through the rain, towards home, towards destiny.

-4-

Blood! Do you understand that? Human Blood,

And the stink of it that has fouled these silent stones!

There is a chorus here—not you, but the Furies,

Raging at the sin and eager for retribution,

Chanting their hatred of evil and bewailing the years

They have had to wait for the cleansing. Blood will have blood…

- Aeschylus[1]

[1] Taken from Cassandra’s prophecy in Agamemnon, the first play of his Oresteia.

I had to leave though, after the way I blew the whole place up, I’d have gone to jail forever if I stayed.  Maybe you think I should be in jail, but believe me, I’ve punished myself more than you could imagine.  I sometimes think of what happened to Greg because of what I did.  Becky, where is he now?  Do you ever see him? I don’t know why I am asking questions like you can just write me back if you feel like it, sorry.  If you do see him though, tell him I’m sorry, tell him, if I had to do it over I would have opened up to him like he asked me to so many times.  I would have trusted him.  I would have told him everything, right from the beginning.  Tell him not to blame himself for Bobby either, Greg didn’t really know how bad Bobby’s mom was when he told us about the plant, if he had he probably would never have told us about it, at least not like he did…and, well he would have done something, he really cared, despite what everyone said about him misleading us—he never led anyone astray.

 Becky, I want to tell you aren’t like the rest of us Claytons.  You are good.  You are beautiful.  In fact you are all that is good or beautiful about our family.  Dad died years before he really did, and me, well I’ve never been anything more than a ghost, a boy lost in the dark—but you, you are so good.  I am so proud of you.  Don’t let this thing…this mess…ruin you.  If you do, all I sacrificed was for not. You are the thing that I hope for—the future that I dream of—the truth which justifies my existence.   I know you don’t want to leave Miss Crowder alone, but don’t let that town, the small minded people in it, or the woods, or the ghost of that dead plant…don’t let any of it mar your future with guilt and shame—I’ve had enough guilt and shame for the both of us, trust me.  You should be free.  You are the promise of rebirth for our past, the proof we were once here, that we once mattered, and that we were not extinguished.  You are all I hold dear, all I pray for.   I love you more than anything, you know that right?  There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t question whether I could have done more for you.  Don’t believe what people say about me Becky, or Bobby either. Neither one of us is, or was, crazy.  There are more things in heaven and earth, to paraphrase a quote, than are dreamed of in that small town’s philosophy.  And now that it is free of its demons, leave them where they belong…dead and buried in the ground…

“Pastor Casey will be mad. You just started. What are you going to tell Dad?”

“Pastor Casey will probably hate me, but that’s not that important. Trust me, he’s seen worse. I left him a letter, he can handle it.” Jim stood at the foot of his ten-year-old sister’s bed. He couldn’t believe she was so young; she seemed so wise for her age. It felt to him like a lifetime had happened since the night she was born. The life he had known before that night was now only a dream—a dream he could barely remember.

“Well still…what about dad? You’ll break his heart, he just got you back.”

“His heart’s been broke for years, Becky. Besides, I’m nineteen, its normal for me to leave home at this age. He’d do the same if he was me.”

“What is it you know, Jim? What are you hiding from me? Why do you pretend like everything is so horrible? So what if Dad isn’t who he used to be? He still loves you, you know.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Becky.”

“No it isn’t, you just want it to be. Tell me what really happened to Bobby and his mom. It has something to do with the glass plant, doesn’t it? I’m not a little girl anymore, I see things, I know what’s going on.”

“Becky, this is nothing you want to be involved with, don’t worry about it. You’re too young to understand, you’ll just have to get over it for now.”

“Too young? I’m old enough to know that what you are going to do is wrong, and I know if you have to do something wrong to get what you want, then what you want isn’t worth having. You even told me that yourself! And why does all this mean that mean you have to go away? You just got back! Are they gonna put you away like Bobby?”

“Becky…I don’t know what to say…it’s not easy for me—not at all. I don’t know where I’m going or what will happen. I don’t get the luxury to know. I’ve run from this for too long. I have to do something…I have to try. Maybe, one day, you can forgive me for this or at least understand.”

“Don’t leave me Jim, not again, I hate it here without you.” She jumped out of bed and clung to him. He could feel her tears soak through his shirt. He thought of the bag by the front door and what he had to do with it. “I hate all of them, even Miss Crowder. I know you like her, but she smells and she always looks so sad, like she feels sorry for herself.”

“It’s not herself she feels sorry for, Becky. It has never been herself. Just remember that you still have your entire future ahead of you…This will just be a distant memory…one day you will forget this ever happened.”

“Why are you saying that? I don’t want a future without you.” She clung to him tighter, and then pulled back to look into his eyes as she sniffed, “If you go, I’ll tell on you! I will! I will make them stop you.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

“Tell who, Becky? And stop me from doing what?” She was sobbing now. Jim’s heart was falling into pieces.

“I don’t know, whatever it is you are gonna do that is wrong. Don’t say it isn’t, ‘cause it is wrong. It is. How can you think something is right if I know it’s wrong? That’s just not possible.”

“Becky, I can’t explain myself to you, you’d never understand.” He fell silent and looked out her window at Miss Crowder’s place, at the empty windows that looked in upon empty rooms, “It’s time. I love you. Give Dad a hug for me, and promise me you will make sure he knows it’s from me.” She clung tighter, clawing into his skin as he tried to forcibly remove her.

“No,” she sobbed. He found her grip was so tight he couldn’t pull her off. He was scared, confused, and desperately afraid of losing his nerve, so, for the first and only time in his life, Jim Clayton was purposefully cruel to the person he loved most. He flushed with a rage he had no clue he harbored and jerked at her suddenly while screaming, “Get off of me! You stupid child, I don’t want you. Don’t you know that? I don’t want you or this stupid town touching me again, ever! I want out, I want to be as far away from you as possible. Are you stupid? Don’t you know that I hate you? Let go, let me go, goddamnit!” His words stung her harder than he could possibly understand. Her chest felt like someone was pushing on it with all their might. She was suddenly numb with shock and her grip loosened without her realizing it. Jim was still so filled with the rage that had been let loose that he threw his sister her onto her bed, and like that, he was gone. Becky stared at the doorway where he had just been as her chest continued to feel crushed from her heartache.

Once Jim was free, he ran. He stopped only long enough to pick up the backpack that contained the map Greg had given Bobby years ago and enough explosives to destroy half a city block. Jim had stolen the explosives from a warehouse in Tulsa the day before. It was already dark when he walked out the front door. The sound of his sister crying from the street drifted down from her open window, but he didn’t look. He walked down the street in the direction of the glass plant. He didn’t look at the Thompson place either; it was empty, anyways. Steve had taken Sarah and moved to the opposite side of town. He left the street, crossed over the dry creek bed, entered the woods of his childhood and, for the last time, made his way towards the basement of the glass plant that had stood there for a hundred years.

Three hours later an explosion cracked the silence of the night sky. Fireworks the size of houses shot in every direction for anyone awake and watching to see their beautiful and horrible tidings. The smokestacks began to collapse in upon the plant. Sirens went off. Hundreds of men fled in every direction. And off in the distance, among the ancient trees, something too big and too animal to be completely human looked on as it limped away—howling its sorrow, pain, and confusion at the blood-choked moon before disappearing into the night.

Jim Clayton, a boy who had performed an army’s work, a boy who would be misremembered angrily only as the guy who went off his rocker and blew up the most profitable business in town, would not be seen by anyone who knew him ever again. He was as gone as the mother he missed so badly. He was as gone as the innocence we all long for in the dark nighttimes of our lives.

When he didn’t show up at church the next Sunday, someone asked Becky about him, and through her tears she told the story as she knew it. It didn’t take long after that to figure out he was not coming back. Then the letter he left Roger Casey became public knowledge and the story about his being responsible for the glass plant was confirmed in the minds of anyone who mattered. People just figured what happened to his friend drove him to it, that some people can’t handle things like that—in fact many of them took the incident as means to claim they were survivors. You could hear any one of dozens of people who were nowhere near the plant nor knew anyone in it at the time of the explosion talk about how that time was a trial for them and the town. Veterans of a disaster they never experienced, people told the story of troubled Jim Clayton, who went crazy a few summers after his best friend did as well until it became legend. It was a judgment of God upon the wickedness of youth who had forsaken the rule of authority, some said. Others said it was the result of his being allowed to do whatever he wanted after the death of his mother. Still others claimed Jim was involved with anarchists, or Satanists, or whatever particular group they felt wanted the glass plant destroyed.

Though, miraculously, only two people were killed in the destruction of the plant, many were injured and hundreds more instantly loss their jobs. For reasons that were never made public, the glass plant was never rebuilt. A recession hit the town for a few years, and, just like after the oil-bust, or the twister of thirty-nine, a lot of people moved away. Some people, not the ones that the town is proud of, mind you, still shook their heads and whispered when they saw Becky, even after she had grown into a woman. By that time, though, the town had, for the most part, gotten over the tragedy, and Jim Clayton was nothing more than a bad memory.

“Where would you go?”

“I’d go somewhere where everything wasn’t a lie.” Jim had replied, whatever that meant. Becky walked through the kitchen one last time. Her eyes scanned the peeling wallpaper and few remaining boxes of Miss Crowder’s belongings. The Crowder home was almost completely empty now; the last boxes would be picked up within the hour. She couldn’t help but think of Miss Crowder baking cookies on any of a hundred occasions as she looked around the now empty kitchen. Becky bent down and picked up a box of kitchen utensils she had set aside for herself earlier. There were ones she had always borrowed, plus a few more that she wanted because they would remind her of the only mother she had ever known. She winced, regretting again the last thing she ever said to her brother about the woman who had always loved her so much. How could I be so childish and mean? Becky asked herself.

She walked out of the kitchen, through the bare dining room and towards the front door. The ceiling sloped sharply down right above the entryway. Jim had always reached up a hand to slap the sloping ceiling whenever he passed through the doorway. She reached a hand to touch the spot he had so many times but couldn’t reach it. She used to hope she would be able to reach it, but now knew would never be that tall. She could hardly accept the house was empty, that Miss Crowder was really gone. She stepped through the front door and closed it behind her one last time. It made no sound at all. She wondered to herself where she would go, where she could find a place where everything wasn’t a lie.

The front lawn was brown and burnt from not having been watered for months. The flowers lying emaciated and dead in the flowerbox had also been neglected—a testament to the struggle Miss Crowder had endured during her last few months in this world. Becky stepped carefully into the street to avoid the broken sidewalk that had still not been repaired or replaced. She straightened her back and thought to herself that the mail had probably not arrived yet, so it would only be a waste of time to check the mail. She told herself again to quit hoping for a letter she had already wasted too much time waiting for—a letter she no longer believed could or would ever come. She walked the short distance to her own nearly empty and quickly dilapidating house next door.

Once inside she sat down the box of kitchen utensils. The light was dim because of the drawn curtains. Her eyes sank to the floor. The carpet needed to be replaced before she sold the place. There were dishes from Miss Crowder’s memorial service still sitting on the coffee table from nearly two weeks ago. Signs of the father who had died a year ago were everywhere. There were, however, no signs of the brother she never said goodbye to. She scratched her stomach absently as she remembered her brother. It was indeed time to go somewhere new she told herself, time to leave all this behind.

The hum of the glass plant no longer penetrated the walls of the house. Her brother had seen to that. Humming like ether, she mouthed Carla Carter’s old phrase to herself as she picked up the dishes. Even the Carter’s children were selling their duplex and moving their parents into a care facility. Everything had changed so completely, Becky felt like a stranger in a strange land. Everyone she had been close to as a child was gone. Jim had been gone for years, then her father, the Carters, and now, finally, Miss Crowder. Becky was on the verge of adulthood and had never felt so alone in her life. That loneliness was what gave her the strength to leave this place: it no longer held anything but loneliness for her and she refused to spend her whole life alone like Miss Crowder. The only reason she hadn’t moved already was because deep down, she held onto the hope against hope that she would hear from Jim again, and if she left, that would never happen because he would have no way to find her.

The sound of a motor outside drew her attention. It was the mailman. He was late, as usual. She congratulated herself on having the strength to keep from wasting her time checking earlier. She repeated to herself over and over that there would not be a letter from Jim and to not get her hopes up as she waited until the mailman moved on to other houses on the block. She sat there for several long minutes after he left and then, finally, went to check the mail. There was a lot of junk mail so at first she didn’t notice the handwritten envelope in their midst. Then she saw it, and her breath caught as she read the return address. It was surreal, like a dream. Becky couldn’t even be sure it wasn’t a dream. Her brother had not once tried to contact her in seven years, and though she had always hoped for a letter, or something, anything, she had long since quit believing it was a real possibility. And though there was no longer anyone who knew enough to care, the letter meant that she finally had proof to show anyone who might doubt her—absolute proof—that her brother had not completely forgotten her—that he didn’t hate her.

She sat down on the old porch ledge she used to lie upon as a child. Her hands trembled as she tore open the envelope. She stopped before removing the letter to smell it—to see if some tactile trace of him had remained. Tears ran down her face as she removed the letter and saw her name in her brother’s hand writing for the first time in so many years. Becky Clayton would leave town in just a few weeks. She would be as gone as her brother, as far gone as possible. But before she left, she sat on the old porch one last time and read the only letter she had or ever would receive from her older brother, Jim.

-5-

Nothing in life is pure. There is guilt and pain

In whatever we do, from the first day to the last,

Hour by hour and even breath by breath.

- Aeschylus[1]

[1] Taken from The Libation Bearers. Part of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. All quotes come from a modern translation of Aeschylus’s Orestia, edited and translated by David R. Slavitt and published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

I have to finish this letter and get it in the mail so it will go out tonight. I know I’ve just kind of run on and on without making much sense, sorry, but I wanted to make sure I said everything, to make sure I got it all out while I still had the chance.

Becky, I want you to know that I confronted my demons that night I left you, and I hope somehow you can believe me when I say that I really am free. I would tell you that you can be proud of me the way I am proud of you, but I think that’s too much to hope for. I’m not perfect and I made some huge mistakes, but I did what had to be done when no one else would. I want you to know that your brother was a lot of things, but he was no coward.

Lastly, I want to apologize for the awful things I said to you that night. No brother should ever talk that way to his sister, especially his little sister. I want to apologize for saying you were stupid and that I hated you. I was just so angry and frightened. It was a mistake, and a lie. The biggest lie, the biggest mistake I ever made. Not a night goes by where I don’t hear those horrible words echo from my own lips and regret all over again what I said. I was young and impatient, I should have thought of a better way to leave, for your sake. I should never have made you think I was angry with you. Becky, I could never be angry with you, I love you more than I love anything—honestly.

Please be good to yourself and don’t be ashamed of who you are, or where you come from. I am so proud to call you my sister. If I could, I would hold you even now to erase those words, to erase the idea I put in your head that I didn’t want to touch you, but that is my burden to carry. Hopefully, though, this letter will allow you to lay it down. Bless me that the furies that hunt me will show mercy when they come to collect their debt. And pray that those who have died by my hand will find greater peace in death than they did in life, for I am no murderer at heart, and I meant no living person harm. Always look to the future and hope for the dawn. Never look back, never believe you are anything short of beautiful. For the woods from which we came are so very, very dark, and it is so very, very easy to lose one’s way out here. I will always love and miss you, I will always be with you.

Your brother,

Jim