Blood of Cain

75

The next morning’s ashen-lead skies, air thick with humidity, fit my sleep-deprived mood. After I checked out of the motel, I found a diner in North Augusta with good coffee and a spotty cell phone signal. The breakfast special was shrimp ‘n grits, scrambled eggs and rye toast. Why not? If I liked it, I’d tell Nick about the concoction. I wanted to turn on my smart phone and find the location to a store. But I didn’t risk it.

The waitress, a slender middle-aged woman with hazel eyes and hoop earrings the size of small doughnuts, refilled my half consumed cup of black coffee. “How’s breakfast, Hon?”

“Good. Do you know this area well?”

“Been here all my life. You movin’ into our little town?”

“I’m looking for a place to buy art supplies.”

“There’s only one in town, if it isn’t already out of business.” She looked at me for a second, as if to decide if I was the artsy type. “It’s called Ben’s Arts and Crafts. You’re about five blocks from it. Don’t think they open ‘til ten. So you got a little wait. You can hang out here. We’re not busy, and we’re not worried about turning over tables.” She lifted a folded newspaper off her tray. “Here, you can read the paper. Last customer left it in the booth.” She set the paper in front of me. If the printed word could make a sound — a noise, I felt like what I read was screaming at me. The bold headline read:

At 10:20 a.m., I was in the door at Ben’s Arts and Crafts, trying not to think about what may have happened to Courtney, concentrating on what I could do right now for my mother. Some things I do well. Many things, not so well. Shopping is one of them. I’m an in-and-out kind of guy. Get it and go. But now I was shopping for my mother. For the first time in my life, and hers, I was buying a gift for her. It felt good.

I found Ben, a Mister Rogers twin who looked like he’d inhaled too many paint fumes. When I told him what I wanted to do, he snapped out of his zombie character and began to advise me on all things art, leading me down the aisles, making “must have” suggestions from paints to painting knives. “Does your mother prefer oil or acrylics?”

“Well …”

“Let’s get her both.” He rattled on about the differences.

We filled the cart — filled three carts, with canvases, brushes, dozens of paints — oils, watercolors, acrylics, some disposable palettes, and a “French-style” easel with a storage drawer. It took three trips from the checkout register to my Jeep to load the art supplies. Santa’s sleigh all packed, and Ben — my new BFF, was my head elf. He stood in the parking lot as I drove off, grinning and waving like Mister Rogers on crystal meth.

My comfortable mood was short lived. Two cars were parked partially on the grass and street near my mother’s driveway. I watched as a dark blue, late-model Ford cargo van drove from her house, stopping briefly at the street, turning toward me and driving away. I looked carefully at the driver. It was a scene I’d watched before in and out of law enforcement. If foul play wasn’t immediately suspected in a death, when an autopsy wasn’t ordered, the funeral home made the pickup. Not in a hearse, but rather a van or a station wagon type vehicle. The funeral guys used the same stretchers that ambulance personnel used. But there was no sense of urgency. Death does that.

The driver stared straight ahead. He wore dark glasses, tan sports coat, white button-down shirt. Face expressionless. Another day, another pickup. And I knew this pickup was my mother.

I felt my chest tighten, heart pumping, adrenaline flowing into my system. I turned into the drive and headed toward her home. There were five cars parked near the trailer. I got out and walked, the air motionless, the whirr of a bumblebee in the petunias, the barking of a pit bull tied to a dogwood tree in the backyard of the mansion next door.

I wiped a drop of sweat out of my eyebrow, the late morning growing hot. A woman, mid-twenties, dark hair pinned up, stepped from the trailer. She had a three-ring notebook and two plastic bags filled with something. The bags had come from the CVS Pharmacy. I nodded and asked, “Is everything all right?”

She stared at me a second, almost like she was trying to place my face. I thought about all of the damn news coverage. “Are you a relative?” she asked

“Yes. I’m her … I’m her son … Sean …”

“I’m so sorry to tell you, but your mother passed away last night. The body was just taken away by Johnson Funeral Home. I’m Debbie Thrasher, and I’ve been one of the Hospice caregivers for Mrs. O’Sullivan for the last couple of months. She died from lung cancer. We think the time of death was sometime during the night. Maybe around three a.m. because her bedside clock was flashing 3:07. But that might have been be due to the storm.”

I closed my eyes for a second, saw the blink of the clock in the motel last night: 3:07. The dog behind the mansion stopped barking, the chatter from a pair of blue jays ended. Nothing seemed to move for a moment. I heard Debbie Thrasher’s voice return, like a radio signal becoming stronger. “ … And your mother was a remarkable lady. I learned a lot just being around her. She was such a good artist, and the stories she could tell of Ireland when she was a girl, they were just marvelous.”

I said nothing.

“Would you like to go inside? Some of her neighbors are there. Mr. McCourt, who checks on her regularly, was the one who found her when she didn’t come to the door this morning. She didn’t talk much about her family. She was private in that way, and we respected that. She did share with me the tragedy of her daughter’s death, but she kept her thoughts about her sons — you and your brother, close to her chest. She talked about her granddaughter who she said was on a mission trip of some sort. I took it to mean she was doing missionary work.”

I tried to smile, but could only nod while trying to wrap my head around what was happening. She added, “You said your name is Sean, right?”

“Yes.”

She opened her notebook. And removed an envelope. “She wrote the name Sean O’Brien across the envelope. Is that your last name?”

“Yes.”

“This is yours. It’s sealed, but marked with her handwriting. She had perfect penmanship. Your mother told us she’d written and filed a will. Her attorney is Sam McCowen in North Augusta. I’ll get you his contact information. She’d made all the arrangements for her death a few weeks ago. She’d bought a burial plot next to her daughter — your sister, in Hillcrest Cemetery.” The woman paused and looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Brien, to have to present you with these details at this time. We had no contact information for any family members. The people in her home are all close friends of your mother, people who were family to her. Do you know any of them?”

“No.”

“I’ll take you inside and introduce you.”

I followed her into my mother’s trailer. The chatter, the subdued mix of conversations going on all at once, it all ended when I stepped into the room. There were seven people standing, some drinking coffee, all looking very sad. Debbie Thrasher made the introductions, people nodding — a mixture of respect, curiosity, and suspicion in their eyes. They were from the clans of the McCarthys, O’Donnells, Gallaghers, and the Fitzgeralds. Irish gypsies or travelers, and they were the only family my mother had in her home at the time of her death.

I looked into the assembly of blue and green eyes, all staring directly at me, all looking for me to say something of worth, something that might somehow explain how in the hell, after forty-three years, I walked through the door. Within a second, a lyric from a Bob Dylan song echoed through my mind: ‘How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home? Like a complete unknown … like a rolling stone.’

I said, “I want to thank you all for being friends and good neighbors with my mother. I had a chance to spend only a few hours with her before her death. But I want you to know how much those hours meant to me, and how much I hope they meant to her. I learned that my mother had to give me up for adoption as a baby. She made the best decision she could at the time. Enough said about that. Thank you for looking after her. I’ll speak with the funeral director and make the arrangements for her burial. I hope you all will attend the service.”

I turned and walked back outside, my mother’s death now truly beginning to soak into my pores and go directly to my heart with the crushing grip of a vice constricting. I looked at all of the art equipment in my Jeep, and wished I’d found her six months earlier. I got inside the Jeep and just sat there. Not sure what to do or even where to go. I lowered the window and heard the sound of a diesel motor coming up the driveway. Within seconds, the white truck was parking in the circular drive next to my mother’s home. It was the same driver.

I got out and walked toward the truck. As he opened his door, I kicked it, slamming the door shut. The man behind the wheel shouted, “What the fuck’s your problem!”

“You’re my problem.”

“Just here to pay my respects, dude.”

“Get off the property.”

“What?”

“You heard me. This is private property, and you’re trespassing. Leave, and do it now.”

He started the diesel, sneering at me. “Dillon already knows what happened. There’s five acres here. All his, now. He might be here before the funeral. Could be two funerals that day. Odds are we’ll bury you soon enough right next to your mama.” He laughed and drove away. I stood there and watched him leave. My mother was dead, and the vultures were circling. A hot wind blew across the dry scrub lawns. I walked to my Jeep, the puffy white cottonwood seeds floating down around me like deceptive snowflakes in the heat of a South Carolina summer.

The mourning dove cooed its lonely refrain again, and the Dylan song sounded like a lost poem in the crypt of my memory banks. ‘How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home? Like a complete unknown … like a rolling stone.’