The Secrets on Chicory Lane: A Novel(23)

Hertz fulfills my needs—I go with a cute yellow four-door Ford Focus. A GPS is invaluable, of course, so that’s a little extra cost. I could use my cell phone, but I want to save the charge.

As I pull out of the car rental lot, my stomach gets the quivers again. I’m driving to a death row prison facility. That is a first for me, to be sure.

Being early summer, the weather is beautiful and hot. To Houstonians, it is probably mild. For me, from Chicago, it’s pretty toasty. I’ve been to Houston in the summer, and it can be dreadful, much worse than Austin or Limite ever were due to its proximity to the Gulf. The route is more or less a straight shot up Interstate 69, so the trip allows me to ponder the next chapter of the story of Shelby and Eddie. I’m beginning to wonder if a novel “inspired by” these events might be worth pursuing once it’s all over and Eddie is gone. I’d have to change the names and fictionalize it. That type of book isn’t in my comfort zone, I’m afraid. I assembly-line produce romance adventures, and they usually provide a good-time fantasy for my readers, who are mostly female. They prefer happy endings.

More than five years had passed since I’d last seen Eddie. I was twenty-two and had just finished my first semester of graduate school at Northwestern. After a couple of years’ absence, I returned to the house on Chicory Lane for Christmas. My mother wasn’t doing well. She had a “nervous condition,” and in 1976 no one really knew what that meant or how to treat it. My dad, a trooper, did his best to take care of her, but she was not the woman she used to be. Since the summer of ’66, Mom couldn’t escape a dark and descending spiral. She had started taking tranquilizers when I was in high school and had become addicted. It grew worse when I went away. The truth is, she went a little mad. It broke my heart to see her that way, which may have been a reason why I didn’t visit home as often as I could have during my college years. I’m afraid my mother and I were at loggerheads, and it was never pleasant to be around her. I usually preferred to remain in Austin during the summers, going back to Limite only for Christmas. There were a couple of years I didn’t go home at all. My poor father, who was just as wounded as she was, had to put up with a lot. Yet he had managed to move on, as I had. He and I would never forget, but we wouldn’t let what had happened ruin our lives. Unfortunately, it had destroyed my mother’s.

The plan was to stay for a month over that holiday season of ’76, as I didn’t have to be back at Northwestern until the end of January. Mom looked like she had aged ten years, but my presence boosted her energy and morale. Dad told me he hadn’t seen her so happy in a long time. I was afraid the visit would be depressing and interminable, but I had promised my father that I’d spend some serious time with Mom.

The neighborhood looked the same. A different set of kids were playing outside on the block. The Newcotts’ house across the street hadn’t changed a bit. Every time I stole a glance to look over there, it was quiet, dark, and vacant.

“Do the Newcotts still live across the street?” I asked Dad while we were in the car on a trip to the supermarket. It was my first day back.

He nodded. “Mrs. Newcott and Eddie do. You know Mr. Newcott died?”

“No! When?” It was the first I’d heard of it. The news jolted me.

“Gosh, nearly two years ago. Not long after Eddie got back from overseas. Eddie was in Vietnam a couple of years, you knew that?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you know he went AWOL right before he was set to come home?”

“No.”

“That’s what I understand. He left the base one morning and disappeared into the jungle. His battalion shipped out without him.”

“Wow, really?” I couldn’t imagine what that meant for Eddie. “So what happened?”

“Eventually he just showed up at the base one day. He’d been gone a long time. That’s really all I know about it. He was discharged and came home toward the end of ’73. Then Charlie Newcott had that accident.”

“When was this?”

“The accident?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, the beginning of ’74. You were in Austin.”

“I know. So what happened? What’s the story?”

“Not much to tell. Charlie fell off an oil well and broke his neck.”

“No!”

“Yep. Eddie was there, too; he saw it happen. Eddie started working for his father’s oil well supply company after he got back.”

“So it’s just Eddie and his mother over there?”

“Yep.”

I had mixed feelings about Mr. Newcott’s accident. I’d never liked the man, and Eddie used to hate him. I wondered how Eddie felt about losing his father.

“How come y’all never told me about this?”

Dad shrugged. “I didn’t think to do so. And your mother wouldn’t have. Her feelings for the Newcotts really soured after what happened to your little brother. And you didn’t come home, you know.”

“I’m here now. I’m sorry, it’s just hard for me to be around her, Dad. She doesn’t … oh, you know what I mean.”

“She doesn’t what?”

“I was going to say she doesn’t love me anymore, but I know that’s not true.”