The Secrets on Chicory Lane: A Novel(37)

He actually waved me away. “It’s okay, Shelby. Go. Leave me. You shouldn’t be with a fuckup like me.”

“Eddie.”

He attempted to sit up, faltered, and managed to do so. I’d never seen him this smashed. There were two half-empty bottles of tequila and Southern Comfort on the little table that we usually ate on. That was a pretty deadly mixture. He had probably had a shot of one, and then a shot of the other. Repeat until blotto.

“You knew I was coming over,” I said.

“Oh yeah, I knew. That’s why you’re seeing me as I really am.” He spread his arms. “Take a look, Shelby. This is the real Eddie Newcott. The one that can’t be with you, Shelby. I’m bad for you, and you know it.”

“Stop it, Eddie, that’s not true.” It was what I said at the time. I couldn’t stand seeing him in such depths of self-hatred. I remember feeling more angry than sorry for him, but it hadn’t been my intention that day to break up. Deep down, I knew that Eddie was an incredibly sensitive person. He was an open wound. And I was close enough to see the lesions.

And yet he still had secrets that he kept away from me.

“Eddie, what are you hiding? What are you not telling me?” I asked.

He started laughing. Laughing. “My God, Shelby, are you kidding me? There’s a ton of shit I’m not telling you. And that’s exactly why you gotta go.” He stood with trembling, wobbly legs. “You need to forget me. I’m no good, Shelby, I’ve already done terrible things, and I will do more. I’m evil inside. I’ve been made evil by my father and—by my father and what he did to me.”

For a second, I thought he was going to finish his sentence differently: “… by my father and—.” But I don’t know what it was. Still, I was skeptical. “What are you talking about, Eddie? What terrible things have you done? What you did out at that bar—you were right, that guy maybe deserved to be taught a lesson—so that’s not a terrible thing. So, what? What else are you talking about?”

“I really did kill my father!”

“I—” I was struck dumb. There was a stretch of silence before I responded with a simple “What?”

He became very animated and agitated, pacing back and forth unsteadily in the small space. I had to move back against the bookcase to give him room. “Shelby, my father beat me and humiliated me and hated me. When I was young I saw how he beat and humiliated and hated my mom.”

I was shocked by the things he was saying. “Why did you come home and live in the same house after your discharge from the army?”

“I had no choice. I had no money. It was going to be for a short time, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“So you killed him?”

He nodded, speaking very fast. “Uh huh, that’s what I did, I really did. I got a job at his company because he, well, hell, he forced me to. You don’t understand, I wasn’t a son to my father; I was just a thing he wanted to control. So, one day out in the field, something happened with the block and tackle. You get to it way up on the top of the derrick. Dad told me to follow him up there so he could show me how to fix it. It was a scary climb on rungs that were part of the derrick grill, you know what I mean? It was a windy day, too! We got up to the top, the crown block, the little platform up there. Even there he yelled at me for taking too long to make the climb. He called me a sissy—even after I’d been in the goddamned army. The ground was a fucking long way down. I knew then that I had my chance to get rid of that bastard. He squatted and started working with the cables, you know? I was handing him tools and there was a moment that he leaned over and was off-balance, you know what I mean? And … I just pushed him. That’s all I did. Just a little push. And off he went. I knew he wouldn’t survive the fall. It was a fucking long way down.”

He plopped down on the bed and sat there with his face in his hands.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. And yet, even though the news was so shocking, in some way, it didn’t seem like news. I wasn’t all that broken up about it. Charles Newcott had been a horrible human being. I’m not even sure I could call him a person.

“Eddie, are you telling me the truth?”

He looked up, one hand still on his face, one eye peeking through his fingers. The image reminded me of one of the more memorable sinners in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of Judgment Day, which depicted the soul’s utter realization of the terrible deeds he had done.

Eddie nodded.

I swallowed and said, “Eddie, you should know that I fully understand why you did it. It was wrong, but I do understand.”

The hand dropped, and he looked at me suddenly with a very strange smile on his face. Like he was a little devil about to pull a prank on an unsuspecting victim. “You won’t tell on me?”

“Eddie …”

He waved me away again. “Go, Shelby. Forget about me. Forget I told you that. Go on with your life, Shelby. I’m no good. I can’t corrupt you anymore.”

My heart shattered. That’s the only way I could describe it. I’d experienced minor romantic mishaps up to that point, but Eddie was the most serious relationship I’d ever had in my young adult life. It was my first real heartbreak—after our very first “breakup” as children—and it hurt. It really did.