The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [15]
I saw above me this sky, the river right up against these woods, saw these ghosts.
I saw all of this, everything I love, exactly where I want to grow old and die.
Huger, I heard whispered.
My eyes opened, and I was in the bed in the dark. I lifted my head off the pillow, felt the pain in my head. The only light was that from the TV, still on, down past the footboard.
“Huger,” someone whispered next to me, and I quick turned, saw a woman.
She had on a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and a dark skirt. Color from off the TV caught in her gray hair like a halo.
On the TV was what looked like the end of a football game, the locker-room stuff, and I glanced off to my right, saw a cot set up under the window, my mom lying there, a blanket half covering her, still in her nurse’s outfit.
I lay back, ready for whatever this nurse was going to check on me about.
“Huger,” she whispered again.
I swallowed, my mouth thick and dry. “Ma’am?” I whispered.
She said nothing for a long few seconds, then whispered, “Tell Leland I didn’t do it.”
I felt my blood go fast, felt my face go hot. I blinked, swallowed again.
I looked at her.
“Constance?” I whispered, the word barely loud enough even for me to hear.
She looked toward my mom. I could see her profile now by the light off the TV: a small nose, sharp chin. She was smiling.
“You have a caring momma,” she whispered. “Cherish that.”
“Yes ma’am,” I whispered. It was all I could think to say.
Here she was: the woman who’d written that sign. The one who’d called Unc and told him what she was going to do. The woman who’d killed the son of a bitch Charlie Simons.
Then she turned to the TV.
The late news was coming on now, a bunch of quick shots of the Lowcountry: the bridges into Mount Pleasant, the mayor saying something, a couple ballet dancers, the beach.
And the lead story: the murder of Charles Middleton Simons, M.D., his body discovered at a hunt club near Jacksonboro.
The anchorman, his big forehead and tiny eyes all wrinkled with concern, gave out the words, quiet and right there in my ear, and now here was the video, all the orange caps and eight or ten uniformed deputies walking slow through the weeds, heads down, looking for whatever. Another shot showed the crime banner up, more men, these in black windbreakers, SLED in big yellow letters across the back. Then came the shot of a stretcher with a blanket over a body, the ambulance with its lights on and back doors open, the paramedics sliding it inside. Nobody in any big hurry.
I looked at her. She was watching it, no reaction. Just watching.
Then came a shot of a man at a podium, at the bottom of the screen the words FILE FOOTAGE. The man had on a gray suit and red tie, was reading something, though it was the anchorman’s voice I heard: “Dr. Simons was on the faculty at South Carolina Medical University, where only last June he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the president of the university for having founded the Christian Children’s Reconstructive Surgery Foundation, a charitable organization providing Third World children with needed reconstructive surgery.”
The man in the film footage finished what he was reading, smiled big, and waved to the crowd before him. The camera pulled away to show the whole head table at this party.
Cleve Ravenel was up there. And Dr. Buck. And two or three others from the club, all of them clapping and smiling.
And there was the woman next to me, looking up at him, her clapping, smiling.
Then it was over, the anchor’s big forehead here again. “State Law Enforcement Division officers as well as Charleston City Police and the County Sheriff’s Department are still searching for Mrs. Constance Dupree Simons, wife of Dr. Simons, in connection with the murder. Mrs. Simons, a trustee and former director of Acquisitions for the Carolina Museum of History, has as yet to be located.”
The anchor disappeared again, and here came more file footage, this time of the woman beside me.