When the Finch Rises by Jack Riggs

Author:Jack Riggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307417749
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

Though he never told me how or why he had been so badly beaten the day we rode out to Coggin Philpot’s, I came to believe that it was somehow connected to Lucky Luther’s drowning. In my twelve-year-old mind, I was even disappointed that the drowning had not been more sensational, that in his struggle to survive, Lucky Luther had been responsible for Daddy’s ear and all his cuts and bruises. I wanted him to tell me a tale, let Lucky live in his story in a way that would make his appearance more understandable to me. I wanted Daddy to tell me Lucky had raised himself from the waters of the Finch able to grab a hold, hands thrashing about with an almost supernatural will to survive against his inevitable drowning. As he drove me back to town, I thought about Rodney Small and would have just as easily found total believability in a story where Daddy held Lucky’s head under while the boy gasped for air only to breath in the silt-filled water of the rising Finch. I could imagine with great detail his small clawed hands grabbing at his face, Lucky’s head momentarily exploding free from the water while gnashing teeth found my daddy’s soft fleshy ear, a last piece of evidence to prove him a killer of children, black or white making little difference, an equal opportunity murderer.

Neither of these stories surfaced beyond the edges of my imagination as we drove quietly into town. Still, when Daddy pulled the Buick onto Robbins Street, something seemed different to me. The place felt smaller under a moonless sky. Shadows filled in, shrinking the land and houses that sat close in on each other. A distant security lamp at the end of the alley pooled its beam below the pole reaching out only a few feet before giving up to inklike darkness. I looked down the narrow gravel road and then back to my house that sat bathed in streetlight. The lamp’s pale beam suddenly began to stutter and then abruptly sucked off, a loud pop high up the pole bringing silence to trees and bushes that hid cicadas and tree frogs. There in the harsh silence, the house stood in darkness, abandoned of life on the inside and out.

Its silhouetted form felt like death, and I imagined Lucky and the baby that would have been my brother or sister staring out at me, trapped inside rooms that no longer felt as much like home as they had just hours before. I squinted, sharply searching out beyond each corner for the glowing eyes of the turkey my daddy had revealed to me that night in the snow. Its appearance I hoped would be proof that these deaths were intended and inevitable. I said, “Daddy, I can tell somebody’s died just by looking at this house.”

Daddy stopped and kneeled down on the front porch searching for the door key. “It don’t make no difference. It’s just a house.” He stood up and looked at me, then smiled and walked over to sit down on the steps.

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