since high school but had never been around him much. He was only about a head taller than Frankie, with blond, short-cropped hair and, I could just see from here, a bald spot starting. I sat watching for a moment. Frankie was pointing into the Parkers’ woods, probably in the direction of his find. My son was beautiful. What was going on in his head back then, I’ll never know.
When I climbed out of the rig, Holly’s father shook my hand, though I doubt he wanted to. “Ain’t we got us a mess?” Cloyd said.
I nodded in Frankie’s direction. “Should he be here?”
“He’s already seen it. Can’t go back now. It’s that other one, Parker. Should he be here? Makes my butt itch, have a queer around.”
It was useless to get on a soapbox. I was pretty sure Parris wasn’t gay. “Parris is okay,” I said. He’d left Frankie and was coming our way.
Cloyd shot me a stern look. “You got a boy to watch out for.”
I let that one go, too, and I should not have. Frankie’s head is on straight about things like that now, no thanks to his grandfather. But back then I worried about slippage, the low notions Frankie would pick up when I wasn’t around. “Frankie is fine,” I said.
“That boy is always alone,” Cloyd said. He was keeping tabs on Parris as he talked. “Boy gets in the woods and just sits on some damn log he likes. If he’s not smoking, what’s he up to?” Holly had told me about the woods. It worried her that he was sitting out there more now than when we first split.
“It’s been hard on Frankie,” I said. “We have to let him deal with it best he can.”
Parris was within earshot now. “Something ain’t quite right,” Cloyd said loudly. “Lot of things ain’t right.” He stalked off, passing Parris without so much as a nod.
With a patient smile, Parris watched him go. What his life was like in that town, for a man so different, I could only imagine. “Nice boy you have there,” he said, and when he shook my hand it was plenty firm. Parris was fit, you might even say buff, but he didn’t check me out the way gay men did. The mutt he had with him showed more interest in my ass. The dog was a birder of some kind, and it had found an irresistible odor on my shoe.
“Kids,” I said. “Got to get out and look around. I think he was up at daylight, looking for stuff. Anything to get out of church.”
“He was telling me about it,” Parris said. “But he doesn’t look at you when he talks, does he? Kind of looks past you.”
“Frankie looks at me, no problem,” I said. “It’s just that he doesn’t know you.” The dog had followed his nose to a spot in the grass, but now he was back, snuffling around the heel of my boot.
“Maybe that’s it.” Parris cast a glance in Frankie’s direction. “I bet the teachers like him.”
“He’s mighty good with numbers. And he likes to read.” In high school, Parris had been a smart kid, too—artistic, and a loner. He’d been best friends with Eddie Briesbecker, who died in a hunting accident over in Yellowpine just before we graduated. Parris never seemed to have anyone to hang around with after that.
“That tree where he found it,” I said. “It’s on your dad’s property? I might have to take down a couple of trees to get the rig in there.”
“Whatever you need. Technically the place is mine, too.” Parris snapped his fingers and the dog bee-lined for the spot where he pointed. Nobody around Kiser trained their dogs like that. People think that small Southern towns treasure their eccentrics, but Kiser wasn’t one of those storybook places. Parris owned a tile business and did pretty well, but when he refurbished his house in town, he painted a scene around his front door so bizarre that the neighbors complained. It was just animals, but they were bright and anatomically odd, like in a Picasso. “He’ll tile your new house real good,” Junior Pierce told me once. “But you wouldn’t invite him to the housewarming.”
“Good luck,” Parris said. “Holler if you need help.”
I hiked over to where Frankie stood with his arm draped over the pony’s rump. Frankie got on well with animals. He wasn’t anti-social; he had friends. I put my hand on my son’s shoulder. “You okay?” I wanted to take him in my arms, but he no longer cared for hugs in front of strangers.
“I was just riding,” Frankie said. “I was watching the ground. I heard something, like someone called my name. I looked up and there he was.” He pulled a bit of mud from Rosco’s tail. “Can I come with you and watch?” He turned to look at me, straight on.
“I’m not sure anyone should watch,” I said. “You better stay here.” When Frankie was little and he wanted something he couldn’t have, we’d try to distract him. Now I nodded toward two men in dark windbreakers, standing by the SUV. “Those guys from the government?”
“Yeah. One’s FBI. The other’s an astronaut. He thanked me. It was cool.”
“Awesome,” I said. Normally Frankie would groan when I borrowed his lingo—back then the word was not so common—but this time he was silent. I put my hand on top of his head, tousled him a bit until he smiled. “What you hear is not really voices, is it?” I asked. “The way I’m talking to you now?”
Frankie looked across the meadow, into the trees. “It’s kind of weird,” he said. “You know how a thought comes to you? Like the answer to a question on a test. You know you don’t know the answer. But something pops into your head, and it doesn’t seem right and you don’t know why you’re putting it down. But it turns out it’s right. I don’t know. It’s sort of like that.”
My son had intuition, probably that was all. Maybe it spoke more clearly to him than to the rest of us. Or maybe he just listened better.
“Wish me luck,” I said. I put out my fist and he knocked his against it. It was the guy-to-guy send-off he favored in those days.
I headed for the edge of the clearing where Grady was waiting for me. Behind him the trees rose in unadorned splendor. I thought the hardwood forests were beautiful in winter, with the foliage on the ground, and above, the branching miracles of cellulose and lignin. Over our heads the sweet gum balls hung like black jewels. The ash leaves that had stayed through frost were drained of color, brittle and defiant. They rattled in the breeze that had come up. I wondered what my boy might hear in the movement of those stubborn leaves.
Grady looked tired. My brother had a good poker face for disaster, but on the local news last night he’d seemed beaten. All day, people had been calling in reports of human remains. It was Grady’s job to guide the government types down dirt paths and logging roads, to find out if the caller had spotted an astronaut’s arm or the disconnected tibia of an unfortunate heifer.
“How’re you holding up?” I asked.
“Thought you might be away this weekend.” Grady’s voice was hoarse; I could tell he’d had no sleep. It looked like he hadn’t shaved since Friday. “I figured Houston,” he said.
“Got this sore throat,” I said, “so I didn’t go.” I’d been spending a few weekends in Houston, without explaining why. I figured my best shot at some kind of honest life was to move to the city and hope nobody in Frankie’s world would hear anything more about me.
Grady
