The Fallen: A Novel Read online

  Henry had merely nodded. “I’ll call you when I get there,” he’d said.

  But he hadn’t called, not then, not ever.

  He would have to live with that. He would have to live with the fact that he had failed his father, just as he had failed his mother all those years before.

  The minister lowered his head. “Let us pray.”

  Henry closed his eyes, surrendering it all to the familiar litany of prayer: the grief, the sorrow, the dumb, inarticulate yearning for—what? Grace? Absolution? A chance to make things right? It didn’t matter. It was all a sham anyway, prayer. Nothing listened. Nothing ever had.

  The minister closed his Bible. He touched Henry’s arm and leaned close to speak into his ear—“He was a good man, Henry, a good man”—and then it was over.

  Asa Cade clasped his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said, “I’m fine.” He glanced into the other man’s eyes, watery behind half-rim glasses, old ivory spun through with blood. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Asa nodded and they turned toward the cars. The crowd enveloped them, names and half-familiar faces and questioning eyes, endless iterations of the same half dozen sentiments—we’ll miss him, I know you’ll miss him, he was a good man, we miss him already—all the old phrases, reliable and heartfelt and somehow inadequate in the end. Penny Kohler took Henry’s hand, her eyes welling. “God bless you, Henry,” she said, and Henry, forcing a smile, promised to stop by the church and see her—soon, he pledged, soon—before the crowd swept him away.

  They had reached the funeral home limo when someone called out after them.

  “Asa!”

  They turned together. In the man who stood there—tall and darkly handsome, his hair falling to the shoulders of a tailored overcoat—Henry saw the ghost of an angry child, his fist upraised.

  Spikes of rain nailed down a July sky.

  Henry Sleep felt a shiver of old guilt.

  “Perry,” he said.

  The other man nodded. When he spoke his voice was neutral. “Henry.” Then: “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

  “Thank you.”

  They stood there for an awkward moment, blowing clouds of frosty breath while the limo idled at the curb. Touching Henry on the shoulder, Asa nodded toward the car.

  Perry stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Asa—”

  The driver was opening the door.

  “Perry,” Asa said as he ducked into the car.

  The door swung shut behind them.

  “What was that all about?” Henry asked, but Asa didn’t seem to hear him. He reached into his jacket and produced a silver flask. He loosened the cap, his fingers trembling, and the smoky musk of bourbon filled the car. Henry turned to look out the window. Perry was still standing at the curb, staring expressionlessly into the smoked glass, when the limo glided away.

  Odors thronged the house, the succulent aromas of the food layering the dining room table, fried chicken and casseroles and bowls of potato salad, rolls in heaping mounds, chocolate pie and upside-down cake; the moist heat of too many people, two dozen neighbors and church members and childhood friends circulating through the downstairs. Cindy Cade scurried through the swinging doors from the kitchen, cradling a dish of deviled eggs.

  “Eat,” she told Henry. “Eat.”

  But the day had stolen his appetite. He felt nauseated, the very air around him athrob with the fluid quality of a nightmare, simultaneously familiar and subtly twisted: He recognized the faces behind the outstretched hands, the voices sounded familiar notes, but time and distance had so altered them that he could not call up their proper names.

  Bill Richardson, his neighbor, cornered him in the kitchen. Balding and gawky at six-four, Richardson held a plate high as he edged through the crowd. “How are you, Henry? You doing all right?”

  “Okay, Bill. You?”

  “Fine, fine. Listen, Sarah and I, we’re sure sorry about your dad.”

  “Thanks.”

  Richardson gnawed a celery stick. “You planning to stay in town, are you?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You’re in Georgia, right?”

  “North Carolina.”

  “Right. Willie—you remember Willie?—he’s got a thing in Raleigh. Six figures. We’re just damn proud of that kid.”

  “That’s great.”

  Sarah, Bill’s wife, appeared at his elbow.

  “Well, listen, I know this isn’t the best time, but you haven’t thought about what you’re going to do with the house, have you? Me and Sarah—”

  “Bill!”

  Richardson turned to glare at his wife and Henry took the opportunity to steal away. He poured himself a cup of coffee and slipped out to the deck. Night had fallen. The clouds had drifted east, disclosing a careless jeweler’s mat of stars. A stream tumbled noisily along beyond the denuded oak.

  Henry placed his coffee on the rail. He blew into his cupped hands, loosened his tie, felt the night gather cold around him. The interior clamor dwindled to a faraway buzz, like cicadas on a summer day. His tension began to slough away.

  “That you, Henry?”

  Asa Cade’s bony silhouette unfolded from a bench in the shadow of the house.

  “I didn’t know my father had so many friends.”

  “Hell, son, he didn’t. He didn’t have half so many.” Propping his foot atop a bench, Asa fished in his jacket for the flask. In the dark, he smelled faintly of bourbon. “Warm your coffee a little?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The door opened, disclosing a triangle of bright yellow light. A shadow fell over them.

  “Asa,” Cindy said. “Is Henry out there?”

  “Henry’s right here. You go on now.”

  Asa glanced back at her, fumbling with the flask, and Henry watched her face tighten with something more than cold.

  “Oh, Asa.”

  “Just leave me be.”

  “Asa—”

  “Just leave me be, I said!”

  She swallowed and turned away. The door shut gently behind her.

  “Goddamn it.” Asa sighed and took a slug off the flask. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” Asa said. “I’m fine.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Half these goddamn people didn’t even like your dad.”

  “I always thought Dad was hard to like myself.”

  Asa grunted. “Sure proud of you, though.”

  “He could have told me that himself.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He worried a Marlboro from his breast pocket and set it alight, the glow firing the angular planes of his face. “For a man who made his living with talk, your daddy found it awful hard to say what needed saying. He never got over your mama dying.”

  “Who did?”

  Henry could feel Asa’s eyes probe at him.

  “Well, I guess that’s true.”

  They stood silently for a while, staring into the dark.

  “I hate this,” Henry said. “All these people mooning around, like vultures picking over a corpse.”

  Asa shrugged. “They’re curious, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what, Asa. I’m curious, too.” Henry turned to face the older man. “Maybe you can tell me what happened.”

  “Wish I knew myself, Henry.”

  “Was he sick?”

  “Sick?”

  “Did he have cancer or something? Is that why he did it?”

  Asa took a final drag off the cigarette and flipped it into the night. Henry watched the ember spin away and crash to earth in a shower of sparks.

  “As far as I know he was fine, Henry.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Cars were starting out front, people beginning to slip away. Asa took a sip of bourbon. He licked his lips. “It was a hell of a shock to me, too, you know.”

  “Was he depressed?”

  “What is this, some kind of inquisition?”
>
  “I just want to know the truth.”

  “I don’t know the truth.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You were his doctor, Asa. You were his best friend.”

  “And you were his son, Henry!”

  It felt like an accusation. Henry sipped his coffee, reminded suddenly of the dream, that nightmare pursuit, his father stepping forward to meet him. Come home, Henry. It’s time. But the fact was, time had gotten away from them both. Time had left Quincy Sleep seven feet of cold earth, left Henry a roomful of books, a decade of strained phone calls, a house where he couldn’t sleep at night for dreaming. His hand crept up to touch his cheek, the faded spots of inflammation.

  He shivered. “You believe in ghosts?”

  Asa held Henry’s gaze for a long moment. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink, Asa.”

  Asa laughed. “I can’t seem to drink enough these days.”

  “Yeah, and why is that, Asa?

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “Should I be?”

  Asa’s hand shook as he lifted the bourbon and took a long drink. When he lowered the flask, it slipped from his fingers and tumbled over the railing. They stared down at it for a moment, leaking whiskey into the frost-rimed grass below. “Goddamn it,” Asa said. “I mean, goddamn it all to hell.” He struck the railing with the heel of his hand. He turned away, sucking on his lower lip.

  “Asa?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. I mean, Jesus Christ, Henry.” He stared down at the flask. When at last he looked up, his face seemed drawn and old, two decades past his sixty-odd years.

  “Let it go,” he said. “Your father killed himself.”

  The words were out before Henry realized what he intended to say, what he’d been thinking maybe all along, unknown even to himself: “I don’t believe it.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you believe. Don’t you understand that? Take a week and wrap things up. Put the house up for sale and go. Go, you hear. There’s nothing for you here now. Your dad is gone and you’re not going to do anybody any good mucking around in it. You’re not going to bring him back.”

  “Are you tangled up in something, Asa? Was Dad? Tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “That thing between you and Perry, back at the cemetery. That was nothing, too?”

  “Nothing to do with you.” Asa shook his head. “Old Zach Holland died not long ago, and Perry got his hands on the family jewels. He had this idea of opening up the mines. I put a little money in it.”

  “I thought those old mines played out forty years ago.”

  Asa laughed bitterly. “You’d be surprised what’s left in those old mines.” He sat down leadenly, fumbling for a cigarette, and Henry suddenly had a sense of just how drunk he was.

  He turned away in disgust. “I’m going in.”

  “Henry?”

  Henry paused and looked back at the other man, staring out into the night, his bony features limned red as he lit his cigarette. Asa exhaled a long stream of smoke.

  “What is it, Asa?”

  “Go on back south, you hear? Steer clear of this mess. Cindy and I, you were the child we never had. She couldn’t take it if something happened to you, too.”

  Asa and Cindy were the last to leave. The night had turned colder by then, wind carving through the ridges to the north. Cindy tarried in the shelter of the porch as Asa walked out to warm up the truck, a black shape under the trees, moving with the overprecise gait of a drunken man.

  “Don’t judge him, Henry,” she said.

  “Judge him? For what?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “He’s had too much to drink, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Her voice was flat, so utterly free of affect that he felt compelled to turn and look at her, her cheeks pallid and her gray eyes fierce behind a shiny glaze of tears, fierce and haunted, too. The word had an aptness about it that sent a hot spark tumbling into the dry kindling of his heart. The whole town seemed haunted.

  “Forty-seven years I’ve known the man,” Cindy Cade was saying, “and not once did I ever see him drink more than two beers in a sitting. These days, he’s stone drunk more often than he’s sober. I don’t think he ever sleeps anymore—”

  His hands came up unbidden and grasped her shoulders.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dreams,” she said. “He has bad dreams.” She shook her head, then pulled away from him to stare out into the driveway. “I’m losing him, Henry.”

  Together, they watched Asa climb into his beleaguered pickup. The ancient engine coughed before it caught with a roar.

  “Is it money?”

  “Money?” She turned to gaze at him, so close he could feel the smoky vapor of her breath. He caught a fleeting whiff of her perfume, a wisp of lilac, as though a breath of spring had for a single instant seized him up. And then the wind tore it away.

  “He said something about investing in Holland Coal—”

  “Asa Cade never had any money to invest. He gave every red cent of it away. He always has.” She laughed. “But they’re in something together. Him and Perry Holland. Your dad too, for all I know. A few weeks ago—this wasn’t long after Christmas—Perry Holland shows up, takes Asa off into the night. Without a word to me, you understand. Not a word. That’s what I’ve had ever since, nothing, and Asa didn’t used to be a man who kept things to himself.”

  Two short honks interrupted her.

  Henry glanced toward the pickup, idling in the circle. “Go on,” he said. “Take care of him.”

  He walked her to the base of the stairs, and there she turned to face him once again.

  “He’s afraid for you,” she said. “I know that.”

  “Afraid for me? Why?”

  “I don’t know. But be careful, Henry. I keep thinking maybe …” She hesitated. “I keep thinking maybe somebody hurt your father, maybe Asa knows it. It’s worth keeping in mind, anyway. Good night.”

  He stood there and watched the pickup’s taillights dwindle in the trees, feeling the cold light of the stars upon his shoulders, engendering within him something colder still, the white arctic light of a dread he couldn’t name. Slowly he climbed the stairs to the house. It was warmer in there, but it didn’t help much.

  Chapter 7

  Gravel crunched under the tires as Henry pulled the Volaré into the lot of the Tipple, a low-slung cinder block bunker with a flickering Budweiser sign over the door. He shut off the car and sat there, listening to the engine tick and thinking about Emily.

  Their last moment together had been branded into his memory—the heat of the August noon, the sense of doomed foreboding as he mounted the porch steps with the contract from Ransom in his hand. The job offer had come late, a one-year instructorship, renewable. Not much of a job at all, really, but he couldn’t expect much more without a Ph.D. And anything was better than another month in the Run, another month with his father. Emily had met him at the door. He never went inside—he knew the smell of sickrooms well enough—but he could hear the drone of her mother’s oxygen machine through the screen, a steady hum intermixed with the babble of the television. Come with me, Emily, he had said. We can have another life.

  She had laughed out loud. What do you think I ought to do with this one? she had asked. And as he started back to his car, she had said something else:

  If you leave, Henry, don’t come back.

  But here he was.

  Sighing, he opened the door and pocketed his keys. It was after ten, the night moonless and glacial, with a needling wind that augured snow. The cold reminded him of his father, more than twenty-four hours in the grave, and he thought about that for a moment, the cold, cold earth, while he studied Crook’s Hollow and felt it all swing back to claim him, his place in the world—the ridges black against the sky, the Tipple, the old coal camp, a maze of ru
sting trailers and crumbling company houses weathered the color of stale sin. In the valley below, the Run glimmered faintly, a broken crown in a narrow cleft of hills.

  Home.

  If you leave, Henry, don’t come back.

  He blew into his hands and started for the bar.

  Inside, nothing much had changed. Not the long shallow U of the bar, paralleling the back wall; not the smell, a yeasty reek of beer and smoke; and not the crowd, a largely masculine brew of denim, baseball caps, and Marlboro Reds—the kind of men who worked with their hands and drove the rusting eighties-vintage pickups and muscle cars in the lot. They sat at tables or shot pool at the far end of the room, narrow and oven-warm, like a cave with central heat. None of them spared Henry a glance as he slid onto a stool at one end of the bar.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Frank Bukowski, wiping his hands on the bar towel. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  “I was wondering if you still ran the place.”

  “Too ornery to die,” Frank said. A gaunt sixty-year-old with flesh the texture of old leather, he hadn’t changed any more than his bar had. He leaned across the counter to shake Henry’s hand. “Sorry to hear about your dad. You okay?”

  “I’m hanging in there, Frank.”

  “What can I get you?”

  “Just a beer.”

  Frank tilted a mug under the tap. “You still down in … where was it, Georgia?”

  “North Carolina,” Henry said. “And no.”

  Frank put the beer down on the bar. “Home for good, then?”

  “For a while, I guess.”

  “That’s good, Henry. I’m glad you’re back.”

  They were silent for a moment, listening to something Nashville pump out of the jukebox, all drum machines and pop production.

  “Emily still working for you, Frank?”