Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

“Good boy-good ol’ Bubba…” Troy crooned, hugging and petting the dog for all he was worth. His heart was pounding in his chest and those thoughts and emotions were still running around in his head, and he still didn’t care to try to pin any of ’em down.

Instead he tucked the little green book inside the waistband of his jeans, and he and the dog scrambled back up the bank and loped down the road to where the Cherokee was parked with its flashers still blinking away. He opened up the door, and Bubba jumped in ahead of him and wallowed across to the passenger’s side. Troy got in and started up the truck and off they went, burnin’ rubber, heading up the mountain toward the spring.

Troy was banking on the kid still being there, and he was-not sitting on the picnic table any longer, but standing over by the granite memorial, sort of leaning against it, with his arms folded on his chest, staring down at his feet and brooding. And there’s nobody does that better, Troy thought, than a twenty-year-old kid.

Cutter straightened up like a shot, though, when he saw the Cherokee, his face looking like a thundercloud, eyes shootin’ sparks. He seemed a little less sure of himself when he saw Troy was alone.

“I was just leavin’,” the boy muttered, starting past Troy with his head down.

Troy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Not yet, you’re not.” He walked him backward until he was up against the granite monument again. “I got somethin’ to say to you first. And make no mistake, this isn’t your mama talkin’ to you now. You will do me the courtesy of listenin’. You got that?”

Only a fool or a very stupid man would care to argue with Troy Starr when he used that tone of voice. Cutter was neither. He nodded.

Troy let out a breath. “That’s better.” He held up the diary, and the boy’s eyes fastened on it, blazing with helpless fury.

“A little while ago, your mother tried to give this to you,” Troy said in a quiet voice. “You refused to take it, and that’s your choice. I can understand you being afraid-”

“I’m not afraid!”

“Yeah, you are. And like I said, I can understand that. Sometimes it takes a lot more courage to face up to a brand-new truth than it does to hang on to a good ol’ familiar lie. Look, I can’t force you to read this. But what I am gonna do is read just one little bit of it to you, and unless you know of a way to turn off your hearing, you’re gonna listen to it. And after that…well, the rest is up to you.”

He let go of the boy’s shoulder and opened the diary. He cleared his throat. “Okay. This is what your mother wrote on April 12, 1978-that date sound familiar to you? That’s your birthday, right? Okay, you just shut up and listen…

And then he started to read. “‘Today I held my son in my arms…’”

April 12, 1978

Dear Diary,

Today I held my son in my arms. I’m naming him Colin Stewart, after his daddy. I just wish his daddy could be here to see how beautiful he is. Aunt Dobie says he is here, looking down on us from Heaven, and that he will always be with us. I don’t know if I believe that-about Heaven, I mean-but if it’s true, then Colin, would you please look after our baby? Keep him safe, and see he grows up happy and strong, and make him be a good and sweet person, like you were. Because I won’t be able to. They won’t let me keep him. They let me hold him for just a little while, and then they came and took him away. They took him right out of my arms. It felt like my heart was being torn out of my chest. I’ve never hurt this bad-not even when he was being born, not even when Colin died. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t think I can stand to live here anymore.

Thought for the Day: Sometimes I think Colin is the lucky one.

April 13, 1978

Dear Diary,

Today I am leaving this God Forsaken place forever…

Troy closed the diary and thrust it against Cutter’s chest, pinning it there with his hand. “It’s yours now,” he said hoarsely. “It’s up to you.”

He didn’t wait to see if the kid was gonna take the book or not, or even look at his face; his own vision was blurring, and after all, he had a certain image to protect. He just turned around and walked back to his truck and got in it and drove away.

He drove down the highway to the fork in the road, where he turned right instead of left, heading south out of the Alabama hills, heading home to Georgia. He didn’t look for a radio station playing golden oldies this time, or pop in one of his favorite tapes to keep him company. He drove all the way home with his own song playing inside his head. A song with only one lyric: “Charly…Charly…Charly…”

“I’m the one supposed to be doin’ that for you,” Troy said, scowling down at the yellow rosebud his brother was pinning to his lapel.

“Aw, you’d just go an’ stick yourself,” said Jimmy Joe, smiling his slow, sweet smile.

Troy snorted. “Yeah? Well, what’s the matter with you, anyway, little brother? You’re the one gettin’ married. How come you’re not nervous?”

Jimmy Joe tilted his head to admire his handiwork. “Got nothin’ to be nervous about. This is the smartest and best thing I ever did. When you know you’ve found the right one…”

“Yeah…” Troy said on an exhalation as he turned away to check himself in the full-length mirror on the door.

They were in their old room at his mother’s house, the room four Starr brothers had once shared. His mama had turned it into some kind of den, maybe partly an office, with a big desk and a computer, and a couch with a pull-out bed in it for company. But there were still a lot of memories there in that room. He could see some of them in the mirror, the team photos and graduation portraits on the walls, and the shelves full of sports trophies. His little brother’s face, looking at him over his shoulder.

“You’re a lucky man,” he said softly.

“Don’t I know it.”

There was a silence then, the kind that falls between brothers who are also friends, but who wouldn’t know how to put that into words if their lives depended on it. The door opened, and the minister from the Methodist church down the road stuck his head in.

“It’s time,” he said, pointing at his watch. “You boys about ready?”

“Will be in a minute,” said Jimmy Joe. The minister nodded and closed the door. Jimmy Joe turned and picked up his suit jacket from the arm of the couch, and Troy took it from him and held it for him while he shrugged himself into it. He felt like he oughta pinch himself-he was having a hard time getting used to the sight of his truck-driver brother in a suit and tie.

“These jitters of yours,” Jimmy Joe said, checking out his tie in the mirror one last time. “They wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re about to come face-to-face with a certain good-lookin’ maid-of-honor, would they?”

Troy let out a breath in a short laugh. “You know somethin’? Findin’ the right woman, that’s one thing. Gettin’ her to realize it-now, that’s somethin’ else.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy Joe said with a chuckle, “Mirabella, now…she took a lotta convincing.”

Troy gave him a curious look. “That right? How’d you do it?”

His brother’s smile would have been smug on anybody else but him. “Refused to take no for an answer.”

“Yeah, well…it’s not always that easy,” Troy said, frowning.

“Hey, I never knew you to give up on a fight.”

“It’s not a case of giving up. It’s more like…the ball’s in her court, now, you know? I’ve done about all I can do.” Troy paused with his hand on the doorknob, thinking about it, looking for the words. Finally he cleared his throat. “She’s got…some issues.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy Joe, putting his arm across his brother’s shoulders, “Marybell mentioned that.”

“I think she’d like to say yes,” said Troy gruffly. “But she doesn’t think she deserves to.” He gave his brother a hard, intent look. “You know what I mean?”

Jimmy Joe gave his back a slap. “Yeah, man…I believe I do.”

Troy opened the door, and they went through it together. They could see the minister waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. Just as they started down, Jimmy Joe nudged him in the ribs and whispered, “Don’t give up on her.”

Then the minister had him by the arm and was hustling them both through the French doors and out into the backyard, down the aisle between rows of folding chairs that had been borrowed from the Methodist church and set up last evening on the lawn. When he got to the rose arbor at the far end, the minister turned and faced the congregation, Jimmy Joe on his left and Troy right behind him.

It was a beautiful day. The line of thunderstorms had moved on, so the humidity was about normal for June in Georgia, the sky a pale, hazy blue and a hum of bees and the smell of flowers in the air. The friends and relations gathered in the folding chairs were fanning themselves, the ones unlucky enough to be in the sunny patches turning red in the face anyway, but nobody getting too unhappy about it, since it was pretty much to be expected, that time of year.

Troy stood beside his brother, drowning in his own sweat and his heart going like a freight train, and watched his family and Mirabella’s come down the aisle-the kids first, Jimmy Joe’s boy, J.J., pushing Amy in her stroller, his cousin Sammi June beside him, the two of ’em nudging and poking one another with their elbows. Then Mirabella’s sister Summer holding her two kids by the hands, and after that, the other sister, the older one- Eve, her name was-the globe-trotting TV producer, both of them tall, blond California girls, real knockouts. And then all the rest of his and Jimmy Joe’s brothers and sisters: Roy and Jessica, Calvin and Rhonda, and Joy Lynn, who’d already done this twice herself and hadn’t managed to figure out how to get it right yet.