The Removed(66)

“I understand,” I said, starting to have second thoughts about coming as I followed her down a dark hallway. The house was full of dimly lit rooms, warm and stuffy. Country-and-western music was playing from the back. The house held a presence of sickness, the way nursing homes feel, as if death is a shadow looming around dark corners, waiting.

When we reached the room, I saw Calvin Hoff sitting on the edge of an iron-frame bed, staring at the floor. He was wearing a white undershirt and checkered pajama pants. He looked nothing like the way I remembered him from court so long ago. He was now thin and bald, his face pale and empty from the chemotherapy.

Ellen turned off the phonograph. “He likes listening to Charlie Rich records,” she said. “It’s the only thing he asks for.” She went over to the window and opened the blinds, brightening the room. I saw newspaper pages scattered all over the floor. Bits of dust settled in the slanted sunlight streaming in from the window.

“Calvin, this lady would like to talk for a few minutes,” Ellen said to him. I waited for her to step out of the room before I moved closer to him and spoke.

“I’m Maria Echota,” I told him. “My son was Ray-Ray Echota.”

I waited a moment, but he didn’t respond.

“I’m Maria Echota,” I said again. “You shot my son Ray-Ray at a shopping mall fifteen years ago. Do you remember that? Surely you do. You remember shooting my son.”

He kept staring at the floor. He scratched at his upper lip, but he wouldn’t look up at me.

“What I need to say to you,” I said, “is that I want to learn how to forgive you. That’s what I have wanted for a long time, to learn how to forgive you for what you did. I have thought about this for a long time.”

“Charlie Rich,” he said weakly. He blinked, confused. “Not the polygraph.”

“I want to tell you that even though I want more than anything to forgive you, I can’t,” I said. “I can’t. You shot my son. You killed him out of your own ignorance and bigotry. I’ll never be able to forgive you for that.”

He shook his head, confused. He kept scratching at his upper lip. On the dresser beside his bed were vials of pills and liquids. Magazines were stacked on the same dresser, hunting magazines, firearm magazines. I looked around the room while he sat there, silent. He was squinting at something on the floor.

I had imagined this moment very differently, with me screaming at him. I had always pictured myself hitting him repeatedly with my bare hands. The moment had finally arrived, and there I was, confronting him, ready to unleash my anger. But standing there now, I couldn’t do it. I was not as angry as I had expected to be. Despite my reason for being there, despite everything, I could not help but feel sad for him.

“The revolver,” he said weakly, staring into the floor.

Maybe empathy was the beginning of healing, I remember thinking. Or maybe I was unaware that time had already healed me.

*

September 6, that melancholy, weary afternoon lingered quietly before the evening bonfire. Back home, at lunch, the meat was cooked without a word, eaten while the sun crept in through the windows. The bread was passed to Ernest and he devoured it, crumb by crumb. I had no idea how he was able to eat. I hardly touched anything on my plate.

Late in the afternoon I tried to keep busy cleaning the house. Whatever hope I had felt lost in the moment. Sweeping the kitchen, I struggled with the situation in my mind: what would happen with Wyatt, whether I would see him again, whether I would feel Ray-Ray’s spirit again. Everything would work itself out, I assured myself. I wanted to try to take my mind off things, off Wyatt and off Edgar, who had been in my thoughts a lot among everything else. I imagined the coming night, picturing the flames of the bonfire lighting up Ernest and Sonja’s faces as we marked the anniversary of Ray-Ray’s passing. Afterward, sitting underneath the sky in the cool breeze of the night, I would tell myself he was there with me. That everyone was there with me, including Edgar.

For me, for all of us, September 6 will always hold a strange sadness mixed with celebration.

Outside, Sonja helped Ernest gather wood for the bonfire behind the house, near the water. The wind passed over us, and the sun had gone behind the clouds, leaving a gray, oppressive afternoon. I slept on and off for a while on the couch. When I woke, I sat up and looked at my trembling hands.

Outside, the wind made it difficult for Ernest to get the bonfire going, but he had always been an expert at it, having built campfires for many years. I brought the food out, the rainbow corn and blackberries Ray-Ray always loved and the bread I’d baked, while Sonja spread blankets on the ground for us. We sat on the blankets and ate in silence, the three of us. We had our silent supper to think about Ray-Ray, our family, and what we would share. In the last light of the day, Ernest put more wood on the bonfire while Sonja and I sat together on the blanket.

“It looks good,” Sonja said quietly.

“Soon it’ll be dark,” I told her.

Something flashed on the horizon, and we heard the distant call of an owl. The fire was warm and bright, and my breathing was shallow. We sat in silence as the sky hardened to night. I saw Sonja’s eyes, harsh and gleaming.

“This is a time to think about Ray-Ray,” Ernest said. “It’s also a time to think about our family.”

Sonja was kneeling in front of the bonfire, her head bowed. She was mysteriously still, an image of a statue in a garden. Slowly, she began to hum. When I looked at Ernest, I noticed that his eyes were watery, and I felt gratitude that he was well. I longed for the moment to last forever. I longed to lie down and roll around in the grass and let myself be pulled into a tunnel. I imagined myself crawling through the tunnel with Ernest, Sonja, and Edgar following close behind. The tunnel would be a long hallway lit with candles leading to some place far away, where the passageway ended in a reunification with Ray-Ray.