Behind the Darkness Read online

I think the drive took somewhere between five-and-a-half and six hours to get to my grandmother’s farmhouse from Millsville. I remember pulling into the gravel and grass driveway. The century-old farmhouse already seemed as though the life had been robbed from it. It stood there as a shell of memories. I didn’t want to walk through the door.

  “My Uncle Joe and Aunt Sally stepped out of the house to greet us. Sad smiles appeared on everyone’s faces. Not mine, though. I couldn’t muster the beginnings of a smile. I accepted their hugs, but found no comfort in them. I just kept staring at my mamaw’s bedroom window. The shade was up. I remember that, because I was thinking about what it used to mean. It used to mean that my mamaw was up and about and that anyone who had a mind to was welcome to come by and visit.

  “She enjoyed when people came by. That August afternoon would have been an ideal day for people to do just that. For some reason, I had felt that the shade, like Mamaw’s eyes, would remain drawn down forever.”

  Tilting my head down, I kissed the top of Tara’s head then straightened up from the door against which I’d been leaning. Tara took a step back and looked up into my eyes. She rested the palm of her hand on the side of my face and brushed her thumb across my cheek.

  There is such comfort in your touch, Wife.

  The smile that came to my face was a benefit to both of us in that moment.

  “Would you like to sit back down?” she asked.

  “Let’s do that.”

  Back at the dining room table I carried on with my story.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting, but my grandmother wasn’t on the property. For some reason I had it in my head that we’d arrive at the house and she’d be inside somewhere—probably on her bed—laid out for viewing. In reality, her body was already being prepared for the funeral.

  “We were the first of the out-of-town family members to arrive, so we’d have the house to ourselves for at least a few hours. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would be arriving at the house starting late that night and into the next day. You remember that house could easily hold a few families as long as the younger members were willing to make do with sleeping bags and air mattresses.”

  “I’ve had the pleasure of those floors several times with you,” Tara said with a smile and a wink.

  “My back hurts just thinking about it,” I replied with a soft laugh and continued. “I still remember that night talking with Lydia…”

  THE FARMHOUSE WAS quiet. Brent and Lydia sat in the dining-room booth. It was a semi-oval, the color of a Granny Smith apple, and very similar to what one might find in an old-fashioned diner. The booth curved around a marble-top dining table, where brother and sister sat directly across from one another, an unopened book before him and a glass of orange juice in front of her.

  Having been at the old house for a few hours, Lydia had readily changed from her uniform into civilian clothing—a pair of shorts and a Garfield T-shirt.

  “How are you holding up?” Brent asked softly.

  “I’m making it. Just a little bit uncomfortable in this house,” Lydia replied. “You?”

  “About the same, I guess. You’ve got to be exhausted after driving over seven hours to Millsville from Langley Air Force Base. It’s too bad you couldn’t have caught a flight out of Norfolk.”

  “It was too late to book a flight, and besides, it would have cost a lot of money.”

  “Still, you could have driven straight here from Virginia. You turned what could have been a seven-and-a-half hour trip into more than thirteen by choosing to sit in the backseat of the family car.”

  “I couldn’t come here alone. I needed to be with all of you.”

  Brent nodded in assent. “What are you going to do about the bed?”

  Lydia looked up at her brother with mournful eyes. She had been offered the opportunity to sleep in Mamaw’s bed. Every visit to the old house since she was a child included being allowed to sleep next to a very special woman. Brent knew she had always loved that privilege. He could remember lying on the floor in the living room, listening to the two of them talk for several minutes each night before they’d go to sleep. Special times for Lydia, to be sure. And probably just as special to their Mamaw.

  “I don’t know. I’m scared of how it will feel.”

  “Well, you know that if you don’t take it, others arriving tonight and tomorrow will.”

  She just nodded.

  “SO, DID LYDIA sleep in her bed?”

  “Yeah. She told me on our way back home to Millsville that it had initially been a little…I don’t think she said it was creepy, but it was definitely uncomfortable for her. But after the first night she said that it was a memory she was glad to have had. She could smell Mamaw’s body soap and lotion on the pillows and sheets. It ended up being a comfort as much as a sorrow.”

  “How was your first night?”

  “The first night was filled with lack of sleep. As it turned out, my Uncle Dave and Aunt Jeanette and their son and daughter showed up around 1:00 a.m. Everyone got up from where they were resting to help them get situated. We were up again for a while as more tears were shed between my mom and her older brother. It was the next day when things really became difficult.”

  That next morning, I awoke sweating. A sleeping bag definitely made the living room floor softer, but it sure didn’t do much to relieve the heat and humidity.”

  “GOOD MORNING,” SAID a vibrant voice at Brent’s feet.

  Brent propped himself up on his elbows to see his dad sitting in one of the living-room chairs, a cup of coffee in his right hand.

  “`Morning,” Brent half-echoed. “What time is it?”

  His dad looked at his watch. “About 9:15. You’re the last one up.”

  Brent knew that wasn’t a surprise to anyone. How he had slept through all of the foot traffic in the house to that point, though, was anyone’s guess.

  Brent looked around the room. The dark-wood walls seemed to soak up the sunlight that filtered through the windows. So many memories were laid out upon the walls. Four generations of photographs filled all of the available wall space surrounding built-in bookshelves. Every time Brent visited the old house, he had found himself slowly walking the perimeter of this room of memories, studying the faces and clothing of those immortalized on photographic paper.

  There was one photograph that he was always drawn to, and stood in front of for minutes at a time. It was an old black and white of his mamaw and papaw—looking very young, maybe in their mid-twenties—standing side by side.

  “Photographs were a luxury back then,” his dad had once told him. “You couldn’t just take your film to a store and have it developed in an hour. And most people didn’t have their own cameras. If you wanted a photograph, it was likely that you had to hire someone to take it.”

  No smiles. There wasn’t a photograph in the house taken in the 1800s or early 1900s that showed happiness.

  “It was serious business to have a photograph taken back then,” his dad had also said. “They were taken for posterity, not for remembering a time of opening presents or cataloging trips to the beach.”

  That photo of his grandparents, though certainly lacking in visible emotion, showed two people that wanted to be together. There may not have been a smile playing across his mamaw’s lips, but her eyes were vibrant with happiness, maybe even a little playfulness. It showed the beginning stages of a powerful shared love that ended in two people being separated much too soon because of his grandfather’s death.

  Brent pondered what he would he look like right now in an old black and white photograph. He imagined that his eyes would be devoid of life. He wouldn’t have to work to keep a smile from his face as the shutter of the camera opened and then closed upon his life.

  TARA STARED AT me for a moment, her eyes deep pools of empathy. Her past was no less painful than mine. I was glad for someone who understood my loss.

  I could feel the burn of tears forming in my eyes. It was so long ago, but re
counting these events in my life reopened some old wounds. Maybe reopened was the wrong word to use; God’s compassion and grace had healed me back then. But I guess one never stops missing the impact players in one’s life.

  “I know your pain, Brent.”

  “I know you do. I’m grateful for that. As the account moves forward, though, you’re going to transition from empathy to…” I couldn’t help but laugh at this point. “You’re going to wonder about me.”

  Her eyes grew big, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

  “Moi? Nooo.”

  Have I told you, yet, how much I adore this woman?

  “Just you wait. I’m looking forward to saying, ‘I told you so.’”

  Tara took a sip of her coffee, as did I.

  “My dad got up from where he was sitting and went outside. The later the morning got, the warmer that farmhouse got. As for me, I got dressed and made for the kitchen to get something to eat.”

  BRENT WALKED FROM the living room, through the rarely-used, more-formal dining room—that is, if the word ‘formal’ could be used to describe anything in a hundred-year-old farmhouse—and then into the kitchen. He, again, recounted small details of the life that used to be housed within the confines of the many walls. When he was a little boy, and through his teen years, he used to sleep in the back bedroom—the smallest bedroom in the house—which allowed the greatest privacy. Brent figured it was due to always being a night owl and waking so late.

  There were times, though, when the door between him and the rest of the house didn’t keep everything out. Every so often, during the family vacations, his mom and Mamaw would start pickling vegetables in the early morning. The smell would cause him to wake long before he wanted, and he’d rush to vacate the premises and get out into the mountain air where he could breathe again.

  Walking into the kitchen on this morning, Brent could almost picture his mamaw to his left, standing at the old pink Formica countertop, washing breakfast dishes in a plastic wash tub, then transferring them to another filled with clean water.

  As the house had no running water, spending extended periods of time in the old home was like taking a trip back into another era.

  He stopped for a moment, taking it all in. So quiet. So empty. He didn’t want to be there anymore. The long-lived joy of his boyhood was gone. He sighed deeply and walked into the common dining room at the back end of the kitchen. His mom sat in the green wrap-around booth, peeling the skin off an apple with a paring knife.

  “Good morning, Brent.”

  “G’morning.”

  Brent walked to the sliding-door pantry and pulled out a box of Lucky Charms. Walking back into the kitchen, he grabbed a bowl and spoon from the cabinets and a gallon of milk from the old refrigerator, then returned to the table to join his mom.

  Sitting there across the table from her, he could read deep sadness in her eyes. Was it possible that he was hurting more for the loss of his grandmother than she was for the loss of her mother? Brent doubted it, but he couldn’t imagine anyone feeling as much pain as he was right then.

  “We must both look pretty pitiable,” his mom said with a smile that refused to reach her eyes.

  Brent just nodded.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Okay, I guess. At least, after I finally fell asleep.”

  “It was the same for me. The last time that I fell asleep here, Mother was still alive. Just in the other room.”

  Sharon Lawton set down the apple and knife and reached for a napkin holder. Taking out a single napkin, she dabbed her eyes and nose.

  Brent just watched as his mom lowered her hands. They began to tremble as she began folding the napkin.

  He didn’t want to watch this. He didn’t want to see any expressions of sorrow. What he wanted to do was get up from the table and walk out the back door so he could scream at the sky in anger.

  A single tear traveled down his right cheek as he sat glued in place. I should say something to her. I should say something. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. His jaw clenched and his throat tightened and all he could do in that moment was hang his head and stare at an empty cereal bowl resting on an old red-and-white-checkered place mat.

  Brent heard another sniffle from his mom, then, “I’m sorry, Honey. I didn’t mean to…”

  A cool hand reached across the table to take Brent’s right. In that moment he knew what he should have done; he should have placed his hand on top of hers and held it. But he didn’t. Instead he slowly withdrew his. He knew it sent a bad signal to his mom, but he realized it only after the action was complete.

  He whispered, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I knew that this was going to be one of the most difficult times of your life. You and your mamaw had a special bond. I know this is hurting you—”

  “It’s not hurting me!” Brent said a little too quickly and a little too loudly, “It’s killing me!”

  Unable to sit any longer, he found the resolve to get up, slam the back screen door open, and walk outside.

  Brent paced the area between the house and the foot of the mountain behind it. He felt some small relief being out of his mom’s presence. That is, relief mixed with a sizable amount of guilt.

  Why did I just do that to her? Stupid! Idiot! She’s hurting, too!

  His pacing became faster as his anger and frustration grew. After another minute or so, he heard the side door to the house open and the screen door slam shut. He looked and saw that it was Lydia. She had just come outside and was looking down the path that led to Uncle Joe’s and Aunt Sally’s home. He stood still, hoping that she wouldn’t notice him, but she turned her head and zeroed right in on him.

  She didn’t hesitate. She walked the fifty yards to where he stood. He waited.

  Upon reaching him, Lydia said, “Going for a walk?”

  Brent couldn’t tell for sure if she was trying to inject some humor. After all, he was in the worst possible place for a true walk.

  He gave a slight shake of his head.

  “It looked like you were considering Papaw’s path.” She looked past him and up the slope of the hill.

  Brent turned to look at it, as well. He hadn’t even thought of the old path.

  His thoughts immediately flashed back to a couple years prior. He had been sitting in his mamaw’s bedroom in his papaw’s old rocking chair when he noticed the old family Bible resting on a shelf below the table next to the window. It had a lot of other things piled atop it—a couple of old magazines, a book or two, and a few other odds and ends that were resting there probably only because they needed to be out of the way. He pulled the old book out and found a family tree filled in. It went back a few generations and included the names of some people that he had known and others he’d never even heard of. Some interesting-sounding names that could only have existed in the Appalachian Mountains had made him smile.

  As he flipped through the pages of the old Bible, he came across a handful of loose-leaf sheets of folded writing paper. Pulling them out, he discovered a treasure trove of insights into his grandfather’s life, things that he had written down about himself. They covered some thoughts about his faith, his relationships with his family, and one particularly interesting account of his encounters with God. He talked about going up toward the top of their mountain to a quiet place where He would sit and talk to the Lord. Nothing too unusual in that, but when he said that God had talked back… Well, Brent’s heart just about beat out of his chest as he went on to read that God had actually told him what year he would be called home!

  Brent had rushed to find his mom and Mamaw to show them the papers, asking if either of them had seen them before. They hadn’t! Brent had been the first person to come across those special pieces of paper, and the three of them, followed by his dad and Lydia, all sat reading them and talking about who this man was. Brent had wanted to go up into the mountain to his papaw’s special place ever since.

  But he never did. It was simply too
special a place. He didn’t know if anyone else had ever gone up since his grandfather’s passing, and Brent just hadn’t been able to bring himself to go up there.

  Looking up the side of the mountain, thick with trees and weeds and high grass, he couldn’t see much of the path that used to exist.

  “I hadn’t even thought about it,” he responded. His tension began to fade into curiosity and wonder. Should he?

  “I always think about it,” said Lydia. “Every time we’re here, I think about grabbing Papaw’s old machete and whacking my way up the path. But something holds me back. I’ve never done it.”

  “Me either.”

  “Brent?”

  He turned to face her.

  “Do it.”

  He searched her eyes. There was deep sorrow in them. For him.

  She nodded. “I think you need to go up there.”

  Brent looked back up the slope.

  THE SWING OF the machete and the heat of the late-morning sun were enough to soak the front and back of his t-shirt with sweat. The path—what little remained of it—was overgrown with weeds.

  With the undisturbed underbrush being the perfect environment for copperhead snakes and rattlers, he had to be careful. He took with him his papaw’s “snake gun”—a little .22 revolver—just in case.

  Looking back down toward the house, he gauged that he was just under halfway up the great hill. He could only see part of the roof of the old house through the thickening trees.

  Brent wasn’t sure what he was looking for during his hike. What, exactly, was his papaw’s “special place?” He hoped he’d recognize it when he finally came across it. If he came across it.

  The trek was very slow-going. He was grateful for the distraction and for an outlet for his pent-up frustration. Whacking the thick underbrush—consisting of ivy, thorn bushes, saplings, and any number of other overgrown plants—with the long blade was a lot of work, but it was also allowing him to relax, as unrealistic as that might seem to anyone else.