Bells of Heaven Chapter 3
Tim was the self-appointed guardian of the meds.
Every morning and evening he would carefully line up the multi-coloured pile of pills - twelve in the morning, less and different at night - and every morning and evening his mother would stand beside the kitchen table and take each one.
Tim’s role was never discussed. Mama’s was more of an impromptu performance.
When he thought of them at all, he thought of the drugs as chains, padlocked, cumbersome, holding down the bright and beautiful balloon that was his mother’s mind. He knew it was necessary, more than most he knew that neglect of any moment of his solemn ritual would result in that balloon breaking free. A part of his mind liked to think of her floating far above him, full of her wonderful, impossible thoughts. Part of him loved the view she showed him from way up there.
But the stronger, harder part knew that she wouldn’t stop, she’d keep floating higher and higher, caught on any current offered until in the end, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to them.
So he wrapped the chains around her and she let him. Sometimes with gratitude, sometimes with resentment. Sometimes she would look at him, begging a little - “I’m doing good, now, sweetie, don’t you think? How about we leave them just for a day, just for one day.” And Tim would shake his head, hating those days.
One by one he would wrap the chains tight about her, holding on fast to her until his daddy came home.
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“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our little family here in the Lexington Marshal’s Office. His name is Burl Torvey. Now he’s real pretty and all, but he ain’t bought and paid for yet, so you break him, you replace him.” Art slapped his newest transfer on the back and turned for the door. “Raylan, like you to show him the ropes. I usually would, Burl, but I got a LPD ‘n’ Marshal’s Office circle jerk goin’ on over at the mayor’s place. I’ll see you when I get back.” He half-pivoted, casting about for his jacket, finally saw it thrown over the chair by Tim’s desk. “Play nice while I’m gone.”
“Sure thing, Art.” Raylan uncoiled from his seat and put out a hand. “Burl, good to meet you. Where you from?”
Stood together, Burl shaded Raylan by an inch in height, and six inches in width across the shoulders.
“Well, I’m still kickin’ sand outta my boots,” Burl grinned, and took Raylan’s hand. “Just home from my second tour of Afghanistan. Marine, first division.”
Tim thought about saying something - the insult came as quick as a blink between Ranger and Marine - but a kinder angel cautioned him towards a neutral smile instead.
Besides, Rachel gave him a Look, and while he’d handled IEDs and juggled C4, he was not touching that.
“Afghanistan, hey?” Raylan was all lazy charm, doing his second good turn for the week - possibly a record. “Doesn’t sound fun.”
“Well… there’s some would say it ain’t that much different back home these days.” Burl put his hands on his hips, very much at ease. “Mind you, they don’t know shit. Afghanistan was hell in a bucket from Day One. I’ve picked teeth outta my hair before breakfast, and that was a slow day.”
“You don’t say?” Raylan murmured. Tim saw his glance, ignored it. A scowl at his computer screen seemed a better option.
“Really?” Davey Parkhurst hovered by Burl, clearly drawn to the possibility of a war story. “You see a lot of action, then?”
“Don’t know what you’d call action, but we sure had a lot of runnin’ and jumpin’ and hangin’ onto our butts with both hands.” Burt shook his hand. “You ever serve your country?”
“He’s serving it now.” Tim spoke loud enough for Burl to hear, and he swung around, grin like a candy for a new acquaintance.
“Burl Torvey.” A hand, over the computer, palm down so that Tim’s hand would be neatly submerged beneath his own.
“Tim Gutterson.”
“Hey, Burl?” Nelson had sidled closer, joining Davey. “You get to do any of that Osama stuff?” He sent a subversive little look at Tim.
“Zero Dark Thirty?” Davey was in the same zone. “You go in with the team?”
Burl chuckled, and it sounded to Tim like greasy fries tumbling down a drain.
“Well, if I was, I couldn’t tell you now, could I?” He leaned forward, confidential. “But I can say I was there for Operation Moshtarak in Helmand Province. Sent more’n one Taliban truck straight into the air.”
Nelson and Parkhurst seemed ready to settle in for the full matinee showing, so Raylan eased himself between the three.
“Gentlemen, I’m sure Burl would love to show you his scars later, but in the meantime - walk with me, Burl, and I’ll take you round the courthouse.”
“Sure. That’d be great. So tell me - are you the Raylan Givens?”
Tim nearly groaned. Raylan’s smile was a thin one.
“That depends on what constitutes the parameters of that Raylan Givens.”
“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” Burl raised his hands in apology. “Comin’ on too strong there, I know it. Just that - I got a friend in the DEA, said Bucks was the worst scumbag he ever met in thirty years of law enforcement. Said everyone in the Miami Dade office broke out the Jose when Tommy bought it, and it took some kind of lawman to bring him down.”
Tim watched, and saw exactly what he expected to see; Raylan dipping his head a little, lips twitching. Pleased. Burl seemed to know it, too.
“You gotta tell me about it. My buddy will be green when he hears I got the story from the man himself.”
“Well, I guess we can converse some while I show you around.” Hat flipped on, swagger set to stun. Tim blew out his breath slightly, all the reaction he allowed himself, and started typing heavily on his computer.
Rachel watched them leave, then picked up a folder and came over to stand silently in front of Tim. He lasted twenty seconds before coming up for air. “What?”
“Overington file. And you could have been nicer.”
“He was humpin’ Raylan’s leg. In the bullpen.”
“Huh.”
It always worked on him, and he pushed back, waving a hand.
“He’s a jerk. ‘Still got sand in his boots’. He’s gotta be back for months to get through Glynco.”
“There’s no need to go making snap judgments, Deputy Gutterson. Give him a chance.” Rachel walked back to her own desk, all compact sense and fairness. “I would have thought you’d have something in common.”
The thought gave him the chance to act scandalized.
“He’s probably some fobbit. The only thing we got in common is an ass points to the ground. And even then he’s can’t talk when he sits down.”
“Whatever.” Rachel gave him a second Look, this one in admonition. “You got to find a way to get along with him, Tim, so don’t go looking for things that aren’t there.”
For the first time in years, he heard his mother’s voice in his head, and she was saying the same thing. And his own voice answered her, as he did all those years ago; I always find what I’m looking for, Mama.
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Tim hit 13 hard, and it hit him right back.
He’d always been lean (“Skinny as a stick with a haircut” his mama said, in one of her mean moods). He’d always been the smallest in his class. In his thirteenth year he grew four inches, and suddenly everything that made sense on a short person was exaggerated into cartoon-like joints and features.
He’d never been a popular kid. He was quiet, and intense, and kind. Nobody bothered much with him either way. Invitations to folks’ houses dried up when there was no reciprocation, and questions were asked about ‘what was goin’ on in that there Gutterson house’. It wasn’t long before the word was whispered about, until one day Yale Deaver came to him and said, without bothering to hide the malice, “Your mama’s crazier’n a junebug.” Once it was said, it became an understood fact, like the way ice storms hit in February and Mrs Edgeworth was an old bitch when it came to her husband (him being no better than he ought to be, anyways). There was a subtle excision of Tim from the rest of the class, barely noticeable to an outsider and largely ignored by Tim, who took the attitude that if he didn’t acknowledge his status, it couldn’t be used against him. So he’d occasionally join in on conversations about parties he knew he’d never be invited to, or barbecues to which the Guttersons would never be asked to bring a plate.
“Hope it’s a hot one on Sunday, love me a barbecue,” he’d say cheerfully, looking them straight in the eye, daring them to call him on it. They never did, and he’d count it as some kind of victory; until Sunday rolled around, and he spent it cleaning house while the late May sun blazed with cruel indifference through the front windows.
On those days, Jazz would sense his unhappiness and stay close and quiet, disinclined to eat through the Gutterson belongings as he usually did.
Because Tim had been right; Jazz did eat everything. Not just forsaken shoes, or rugs, or broom-handles; but TV cords, pot plants, even tablecloths. Shelley would scold, Mama would laugh, but it was Tim who swept up the pieces, muttering, and put them in the bin, just like it was Tim who cleaned up the yard (finding the remains of many Gutterson belongings in Jazz’s offerings, severely transformed by his internal makings).
It all became part of Tim’s jobs because Jazz had, by some kind of unspoken, family osmosis, been awarded to him as his. Mama’s interest waxed and waned, driven by her internal tides that so often threatened to wash her away from them all. Shelley would adopt Jazz for an afternoon and brush his hair into magnificent constructions of gel and ribbons and then get distracted. Book-loving Pixie remained largely uninterested. So it was Tim who took Jazz with him into the forest, up the mountain as far as they could go and get back in daylight. His body was ugly, but it was strong; and although he never thought of the word as having anything to do with him, it was graceful, too. The grace was there in the way his body did whatever he asked of it, no matter how torturous. Climbing trees, scaling rocks, swimming in the cold green river, spitted with foam and branches in the late spring floods. He’d crawl out as Jazz laughed at him from the bank and shiver in the patches of sunlight coming through the red oak leaves, looking down at the body that was all angles and knots, knees and elbows like roadblocks in his own skin, feet and hands like a frog’s, all splayed and knobby and long. And somehow, it didn’t matter. In his mind, his awkward self was as unpossessable as the river, and like the river, he knew this growth was just pushing past the boundaries until everything settled down again come full summer.
His father came home in mid-June. Tim was never certain where his father went on his trips. “Headin’ south, work to be had at Pine Bluff,” his father had said in April; but it could just as easily have been north to Corning, or west to Ash Flat, and he wouldn’t always arrive back from the direction he left. It never followed a pattern Tim could divine, and he’d long since stopped asking. Sometimes his father brought home canned goods, or off-cut clothing; once he had a trunkful of new VHS tapes. His mother was thrilled with it all.
In Tim’s thirteenth June his father pulled into the drive with the back seat brimming with plastic sheeting.
“Look at that!” Mama shrieked. “Dally Gutterson, if you don’t beat all!” She threw herself into his arms, and he held her, carefully, quiet in his homecoming as she celebrated out loud.
Shelley, too, shrieked. Tim looked up from where he was patching the spouting and gave a friendly wave, hands too busy with duct tape and scissors (and fending Jazz away from both) to do much else.
“Hello, son.” Dally came and stood behind him, calm, gentle. “I see you’re still holding down the fort.”
“Not so much a fort, more a funhouse,” said Tim, and he grinned up at his father, squinting against the sun that burst around his head. Dally put his hand on Tim’s shoulder.
“Good work, boy.” And it was enough, those few sincere words of thanks and praise, for all the months of watching and caring and doing that Tim took upon himself in his father’s absence.
His daddy walked back to where his mama was dancing on the spot. “How you doin’, darlin’?” he said, taking each of her hands in his own.
“I’m good, sweetheart, real good,” and they stood there together with something between them that made Tim turn back to his taping with sudden vigour. Thirteen year old boys did not tear up at their parents’ doings.
“Well, hello, Dally! So you made it back!” The halloo came from next door, and the enormous figure of Thurgood Galby, propped against his porch railing.
“Hey there, Thurgood. Y’all doin’ well?”
“Doin’ real well, real well, Dally. Whyn’t you and the family come over tonight, have us a cook-up, catch up on the news, huh?”
Tim didn’t know how far his father had driven that day, but he could see the tired tightness around his eyes and knew that supper with the ever expanding and expansive Thurgood, and his eternally petite and pretty wife Rhonda, was not what he had planned. But Dally Gutterson was courteous to a fault, so he smiled widely and simply said, “Well, that sounds alright.”
Tim cut the tape and straightened, shook the spout a little to see if it would hold. It saved him from shaking Mister Galby’s neck.
“Jazz. C’mon now,” and Tim collected a load of plastic sheeting from the car, wondering where the hell he’d store it, before following his parents inside.
“Dad? Where’d you get this from?”
“Fella down Tuckerman way. Painted three of his rooms and talked him into throwing them in as a bonus. Reckon I can sell it to old Mosley.”
And that was the way of it; twenty odd jobs and odd payments for eight weeks’ work, with nothing but vague recollections of a deal here, a bargain there to bear witness to his father’s labours. Tim took the plastic into the backroom. It occasionally occurred to him to wonder if his father’s dealings were on the right side of the law, and it brushed past his mind now, but the thought never settled. Dally Gutterson might be a poor businessman, but he was as honest and honorable as the summer was long and hot, and Tim knew he could stake his faith in that.
Mama insisted on a wash and brush up for the whole family before trekking to the Galby’s, arms laden with salads and Shelley’s apricot pie.
“Well, howdy, Clara! Dally!” Rhonda Galby met them by the side of the house, took Mama’s offering from her as though to spare her the burden. “We’re all in back, just holler so he hears you.”
Galby couldn’t hear anyone over the sound of his own voice, Tim thought. There was something about the man that scraped across his soul, and he stayed close to Mama, watching as the occasion and the excitement of her man’s return set the balloon twisting up off the ground.
They ate well for the first time in months - Galby’s belly was honestly come by - and Tim took thirds and fourths as his body woke to appetite long-suppressed. Rhonda laughed, and ruffled his hair.
“I swear, Tim Gutterson, I don’t know how your mama feeds you! You’d eat me out of house and home if’n you were mine.”
Vaguely, Tim sensed some kind of insult there. Not to him, which was the only reason it sparked a warning. He watched harder, even as he stretched out on the lawn against Jazz’s belly, and after a time he thought he heard a scratchiness in everything Rhonda said, a kind of Coleman lamp hiss playing underneath the conversation. He saw something else, too; she never looked at his daddy.
It made no sense to him, but as he watched her in the gathering dusk, laughing at something Thurgood boomed, sitting with her dress tucked neatly under her thighs and toes pointed inwards, he realized that, pretty as she was, the sight of her little breasts shadowed in the porchlight made him as worried as they made him burn.