The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [58]
There were trees, yards, brick houses and vinyl-siding houses. There were driveways with RV’s and jon boats parked in them, some with bikes just dumped, kids in a hurry to get in the house for supper.
“Turn left,” Unc said, and here was a street on the left, and I turned.
“Fourth house on the right,” he whispered.
I slowed down, pulled to the curb in front of the fourth house on the right. A mailbox stood out front, the numbers 2032 on the side in those reflective stickers.
I turned my headlights off and looked at him. “We going in?”
He was turned to the house, away from me. “What does it look like?”
“Looks like a house.”
Slowly he shook his head, then whispered, “Tell me.”
I leaned over the steering wheel to see past him to the house. I said, “There’s a green Dodge Caravan parked out front. It’s a two-story house, light blue siding. The garage door’s open, and there’s a workbench in there, no room for a car for all the junk. Two bicycles on the sidewalk up to the front door, both of them flat on the ground.”
I leaned back. “It’s a family,” I said. “A family lives there.”
“Two oaks out front,” he whispered.
He was right. Two oaks stood off to the left of the front yard, and I saw where somebody’d hung a rope swing off one of the branches, just a loop of rope and a piece of two-by-four.
I said, “Unc, we going in? Because if we are, then we need to go.”
He turned to me. He put out his hand for me, and I saw it was shaking.
I took hold of it, squeezed hard. “Unc, what’s wrong?”
“Greed,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s me being greedy.” His hand was cold in mine, and I squeezed harder. “Maybe I ought to sell it. Because my wanting it’s just the other side of their wanting it.”
“Who?” I said. “Who wants what?”
He looked at me a long second, then pulled his hand out of mine, turned and pointed at the house. He said, “This is where we lived.”
It took a second, but it sank in.
Aunt Sarah, Unc. Where she died, where Unc lost his eyes. And his life, the first one.
Where the next life, the one out to Hungry Neck, started. The one empty of any real family, just me out on the weekends.
It was a family living in there. Now.
“She killed herself,” he whispered, “my Sarah.” He touched the glass of his window. “It’s my own greed made her do it. My own.”
I said nothing, only put both hands to the steering wheel, held on tight.
I wasn’t ready for this. Not news of Aunt Sarah, of another suicide.
I gripped and regripped the wheel, tried hard to make some sense out of all this, any of it: my mom, the club, Unc, and Dr. Cray. And this.
But there was nothing for me to make of it, and suddenly the only thing came clear to me was the why behind Mom telling me only of facts that day I’d asked, the trailer choked with boxes, us ready to move to North Charleston, Unc still as a stone on the sofa out in the front room: there was a fire, Aunt Sarah died, Unc’s eyes were blinded with exploding glass.
The only thing came clear to me was the veil over it all, a veil of love, black and opaque: love was at the bottom of things, it came to me, always. Unc loved Aunt Sarah, and saw her die. Unc’s love of Hungry Neck was at the bottom of why Mom was kidnapped. Now my own love for my mom was why I wanted out of here, away from where another suicide had taken place, why I wanted to get away from Unc and his preoccupations with his own guilt: love was the why of too much.
“Now Eugenie’s in it, my greed, and you too. And it’s greed killed Constance and Charlie Simons both. Good as killed Cray back there. So I’ll sell. To those investors.” He paused. “Let them have it. I’ve had enough.”
It sounded good to me. If it meant getting Mom back.
But sell it to who? What did he know now that I didn’t?
“Who?” I said again. “Who are the investors? And what does that have to do with what Cray said?”
He looked at me again, on his face