You’ve Got Some Nerve
Heather Bell Adams
When Brandon comes back to Crescent Gap, he finds it changed, at least on the surface, and, in other more essential, heart of the matter ways, the same as it’s always been. Kudzu has eaten up more of the landscape so that the hand-painted signs advertising jellies and honey and pick-your-own apples are barely legible. Brandon takes it all in from the passenger seat of Russ’s Bronco, the same beat-up model his friend has had since high school, back when they ran cross country. Down by the turnoff for the lake, a new bed and breakfast has sprouted, and hanging baskets of ferns swing along the porch. A wooden cross is stuck in the ground by the worst of the switchbacks. Here a stand of bee boxes, there a Ford pickup on blocks, its open hood a hungry mouth.
Brandon clears his throat. “Appreciate you heading down to get me.”
This isn’t like the times when he came home from deployment. This time he had to get a doctor to sign off. A stack of typed forms in his backpack promises he is no longer a danger to himself or others, that he’s completed the program, that he understands if he screws up again, he can be sent to jail.
They’re climbing the Saluda grade up from South Carolina, the road threaded haphazardly around its spool, no neat spiral, no careful containment, but instead a jagged route following the contours of laurel thickets and rhododendron and, of course, the
Blue Ridge mountains, every so often a granite face peeking out, flecks of mica like tears in the afternoon light.
Russ runs his hand along the back of his hair, so long now it reaches his shirt collar. “We’ll have to stop for gas here in a bit, sorry about that, man.”
Brandon shrugs. “Gotta get it over with at some point. Seeing people, I mean. Letting them know I’m back.”
“Word will get out here pretty quick.”
“If it weren’t for Kira, I ought to head someplace else. Fresh start and all that.” Outside the window the land begins to level out, and the road widens as they get closer to town.
“Yeah, but you’ve got the house too.”
“It’s my daughter I’m most worried about,” Brandon says, embarrassed at the softness to his voice. Russ has a point though; the house seems easier to think about. Julie had painted the front gate butter-yellow when she was six months pregnant with Kira. She’d refused Brandon’s help, but when he brought out a pitcher of iced tea she’d glanced up at him and said he was the sexiest man she’d ever known. She’d gulped down two glasses, the ice knocking against her teeth, and swiped her arm across her mouth. He pictures the kitchen table where Julie swore at the sticky spots of syrup, rubbing the dishcloth over and over, a curl clinging to her forehead. In the middle of the night he’d sat at the bend in the staircase rocking the baby on his lap, the moon keeping watch through the wagon-wheel window, Kira’s pointer finger looped around his thumb, squeezing, once, twice, three times, as she fell back asleep.
Closer to town he sees that the feed store is gone, replaced by a hippie dippy-looking garden center, stacks of glazed pots and rain catchers shaped like lotus flowers. At the intersection with Willow Street a traffic light hangs where there used to be a stop sign. All this in barely over a year’s time.
At the gas station, Brandon leaves Russ to tend to the car and goes inside for the restroom. Behind the counter stands TJ Kessup.
“Shit, look what the cat drug in,” TJ says. “Brandon Murphy, as I live and breathe.”
Brandon raises his hand in a half-hearted wave.
TJ crosses his arms. “Man, you’ve got some nerve coming back here after what you did.”
Brandon thinks of asking where else he’s supposed to go, but he doesn’t say anything. He pretends to study the packs of crackers and granola bars on the closest shelf.
“That pretty little wife of yours, biggest shame I ever heard of,” TJ says.
Brandon puts a pack of graham crackers, Russ’s favorite, on the counter. “I came back for Kira,” he says quietly.
“Heard she was living with her grandparents.”
“You heard right. She belongs with me though. A girl belongs with her dad.”
TJ cackles. His teeth are stained with tobacco juice. “The balls on you. She’s best off with her mother too, isn’t she?” He shakes his head. “And that’s not possible, thanks to you and your messed up—” here TJ pauses and circles his finger around his ear as if to indicate craziness.
Brandon swallows hard. “Yeah, I know. You think I don’t re-live it just about every moment of every day?” But he worries TJ can pry open his brain and see the rotten core of his lie. Truth is, what he did to Julie only hovers at the edge of his consciousness. The scene at the house, that particular moment, is not one he can bring himself to picture like the others. Just about everybody in town knows about that night though. After Julie was gone, Brandon had been so worked up, drowning in shame, he’d not been shy about telling it. He’d welcomed the dark looks, the castigation, because he knew he deserved worse.
TJ rings up the crackers. “Better watch your back. Folks around here won’t like you slinking back into town. Not one bit.”
Brandon hands over a wad of cash. “I guess I’ve got more important things to worry about than what y’all think.” Too late he realizes the people around town are the ones who will decide if he gets his daughter back. They’re the sheriff, the social worker, the judge, the character witnesses. He ought to have known it before. TJ’s wife works up at the hospital and she might could guess a thing or two about the kinks in Brandon’s mind or about whether Julie had suffered. Brandon pulls himself up taller and meets the other man’s eyes. “I’ve been rehabilitated.”
“Rehabilitated, my ass. You get on out of here.” TJ tosses the crackers onto the floor.
Brandon’s cheeks burn as he bends to retrieve them. Before he turns away he notices TJ picking up the phone. As he dials with one hand he flicks Brandon off with the other. Later, Brandon will remember both the phone call and the gesture and wonder about them, suspicion festering.
When Brandon came home from Iraq, some three years back, there’d been a party at the bowling alley on Church Street—bowls of stale pretzels, a cooler of Coors Light, an American flag sheet cake from Bi-Lo. TJ had been there, had trotted up to Brandon and asked if he could see his medal. He’d stood for a long time beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights peering at the medal like he could see his reflection, then handed it back.
“You’re a better man than I’ll ever be.” TJ had squeezed Brandon’s shoulder. “Anything you ever need, you let me know. Anything at all.”
Back in the car Russ asks if he saw anybody he knows.
“Baptism by fire.” Brandon barks out a laugh. A strange expression, come to think of it. The only baptisms he’s seen have been in the sanctuary of First Baptist or, around Easter, down at
the river. He puts the crackers in the cubby under the radio dial, and Russ nods his thanks. The three of them—Brandon, Russ, and Julie—grew up together, each of them born and raised in Crescent Gap. But after what Brandon did to Julie it’s not surprising most everybody around town, except, thank God, his oldest friend in the world, would turn their backs on him.
As slow and careful as Russ drives, it takes close to an hour to wind their way up the mountain. The closer they get to Ridge Road, the more Brandon fights to keep still. The car is so small, the landscape outside without boundary or limit. From this distance he can’t see the creek but knows it to be running alongside the road. When he was a boy, his father took him fishing for rainbow trout out there. He’d pointed north and explained how the creek flowed to the French Broad, some 250 million years old, one of the oldest rivers in the world. Now Brandon puts his hand on his knee to quell the nervous jiggling.
“You need me to ask around about work? GE might be hiring,” Russ says.
All these years Brandon has driven past the General Electric plant on Spartanburg Highway, and he still doesn’t quite understand what they make. Something to do with light bulbs or maybe transformers. The monthly checks he gets from the service aren’t enough to live on, and he’ll need to do something for money, especially to give Kira what she deserves.
“Might be worth a try,” he says, even though he can’t quite picture himself on an assembly line. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” Before he joined up, he’d worked for the wildlife center over in Asheville. He’d been told to wear lined gloves when handling the owls so their talons wouldn’t scratch his arms. But when his boss wasn’t looking he’d slipped off the gloves. Being that close to the birds, nothing between his skin and theirs, made the pain worth it. “You know of anything outdoors?”
Russ shakes his head. “Not right off hand. Construction maybe. New houses going in at the Harrell Farm. Patio homes they call them.”
“You can’t mean the place with the goats?”
“That’s the one. We went up there on a field trip back in the old days, didn’t we? They sold pails of feed for a dime, best I can recall.”
Brandon sighs and rubs his palm where a goat would’ve licked. “You said the house is all right? I appreciate you going by. I’ll mow the yard first thing. Clean out the gutters.”
“I’ve been mowing it.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“No trouble at all. You need help with the gutters, let me know. When I went by this morning I didn’t see anything that jumped out at me. The chimney’s crumbling but it’s been that way for years, hadn’t it?”
Brandon nods. The house has been in the Murphy family for three generations. When he and Julie weren’t on-base in some God forsaken spot, when he wasn’t deployed somewhere worse, they lived there, the only real home they’d known. His grandfather built the house to begin with. A man who’d walked around with stuffed-full pockets—sticks of Big Red gum, a comb the barbershop had given out, a handful of nails and screws, a Camillus pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle. The same man who’d hired a local artist to make a lady bug, no bigger than a fingernail, out of stained glass, adding it to the bay window in their bedroom to surprise Brandon’s grandmother.
When they turn onto Ridge Road, Brandon ticks through the list in his mind. Besides the outdoor work he’s already mentioned, he’ll sweep and vacuum and stock the refrigerator. Kira is partial to string cheese and honey-glazed pecans, cubed watermelon, peanut butter on whole wheat bread. Then again her preferences could’ve
changed in the past year. What an eleven-year-old liked a twelveyear-old might’ve outgrown. The letters they’ve exchanged have been brief, the phone calls even more so. But if her grandparents will let her come for a visit, he’ll have her bedroom all ready, the sheets washed and maybe a new windchime outside her window.
The road curves all over the place, and he presses his foot against an imaginary gas pedal, willing Russ to go faster. Once they get to the house, he’ll be able to breathe again. Looking ahead, Julie won’t be part of his days, he knows that, but he hopes Kira will, given time.
“I’ll start making calls first thing tomorrow.” He’ll need legal help, but it’ll have to be cheap. He peers out the window where the setting sun bleeds across the sky. “I’m feeling good about it though.”
“You’re due some decent luck from the universe or whatever.” If Russ wasn’t driving, Brandon guesses he would punch him in the arm. “You set for dinner?”
Brandon will heat up a can of soup, no use going back into town at this hour, and he doesn’t want to impose on Russ any more than he already has. If Brandon has to guess, soon as Russ and his wife sit down at the dinner table and dip their heads to say grace, they’ll both be thinking the same thing, thanking God their lives haven’t turned out like his.
Russ leans forward, frowning. “What’s going on up there? What’s that smoke?”
“Brush fire maybe got out of hand.” Brandon tries to sound casual, but the smell takes him right back to Iraq. The dust-choked air, the sunburn on the back of his neck, the M-16, the frenzied shouting. His heart or soul, he didn’t know which, lodged in his windpipe.
“Doesn’t look like a brush fire to me.” Russ slows the car as they round the last curve.
Brandon doesn’t answer. He’s trying to swim his way back from the worst memory of all. That’s the way of it, one memory rippling into another, like gathering waves. They had sat down for dinner at the same scarred oak table where he’d grown up eating. The timer on the stove had buzzed, a simple sudden thing. He’d jumped up like he’d been shot, the clatter of a plate so much like rifle fire. His daughter wailed, hands at her mouth, chipped blue glitter nail polish. His wife tackled him, the onion scent of her sweat, the freckles along her hairline—he’d once told her they were shaped like an infinity sign. He’d grabbed a steak knife, its blade edge flashing.
His vision blurs. The house that comes into view is not the house of his imagining. Brandon tries to remember how to breathe. The more he struggles to understand, the less sense it makes. He tells himself not to draw any conclusions. In the minute between unknowing and knowing lives all manner of possibility. He gets out of the car. Ignoring Russ’s warnings, his balance knocked sideways by the smoke, he stumbles over tree roots and uneven ground. He hurries up to the gate. The butter-yellow has faded. Twelve years it’s been since Julie painted it.
The night he’d come after her with the knife, she had fled. The only miracle was that she hadn’t taken Kira with her. In the past year Brandon had circled around that puzzling fact time and time again. It must have meant she’d planned on coming back soon—and that she had trusted him with Kira. He had begged and pleaded from the doorway as Julie scrambled down the hill, her hair falling out of its bun, her sandals slipping on the wet earth. There had been a storm earlier in the evening, and the mist still hung thick as a stage curtain. Brandon thought of running after her but stopped because he didn’t want to scare her. He was—and was not—a monster. Julie made it to her little Volkswagen and tore down the driveway and out of sight.
An hour later the sheriff rang the doorbell. He told of how Julie had taken the curve down by the river without slowing down even a little bit. Alvin Jenks, leaving the newspaper office late on account of a problem with the pistons on the press, noticed her car in the water wedged on its side, come to rest against a rock, wheels spinning on their way to nowhere. His hat in his hands, the sheriff said the mud snaked in through her half-open window, and Brandon stopped listening. Only in his nightmares could he imagine the sludge clogging her nose and mouth, the same mouth that had kissed him not three hours earlier, that might or might not in that last moment have been trying to form a scream.
Now up on the hill the house burns, the same house Brandon’s grandfather built, and Kira came home to as a newborn in a stocking cap embroidered with dancing frogs. Brandon flings open the gate and leans into the slope as he climbs. He’ll see if everything is lost or if there might be something he can salvage.