Dylan trod halfway down the slope, gingerly picking his way to avoid sliding on the slick grass. He stopped, looked up again, and saw Mr. Thompson swinging slightly at the other end of the rope. Dylan froze in shock.
Sam called, “I need a…hatchet, or an ax. A big knife. Hurry boy. And tell Nana to call the police. Mr. Thompson’s had an accident.”
Dylan understood Mr. Thompson had taken his own life. The image of the rigid form swaying at the end of that rope. The panicked expression on his father’s face. When Dylan dashed breathless through Nana’s front door, excited and very afraid, Nana looked as confused as he felt.
He’d demanded that she call the police, and then had grabbed her butchering knife from the shelf beneath her butcher block. She set her jaw firmly and stepped in front of him, her hand out, uncompromising. Dylan had started to sputter something and she waved her other hand, palm up, slowly. Dylan understood. He placed the handle of the knife in Nana’s palm. She gestured at the chair.
Sitting down, he blurted, “Mr. Thompson’s had an accident. He’s hanging in a tree out back of his house. Dad said fetch a knife to cut him down and call the police.” His voice quavered, but he managed to get it all out.
In the middle of his account, Nana picked up the phone, waited a beat, and said “Melba, it’s an emergency. I need to talk to Walt or one of his men.” While she waited, Nana cupped her hand over the phone.
“Tell your dad not to touch Mr. Thompson. What’s done is done, and the police will want to—”
She paused, listened, and turned away to speak in a lower voice. She still held the knife in her free hand. Dylan sat, waiting. He lifted his hand to his mouth to wipe it. Stuck to his damp fist was a folded piece of paper. He glanced back at Nana, who was fussing with whoever she was talking to, her voice hushed.
Dylan peeled the paper from his fist and laid it back on top of the newspaper, opening it.
May 16, 1967
Sam –
Sorry for putting you in charge. By the time you see this, I will be dead. Unless the paper is late today. But it usually is right on time, that boy is a good one. You can find me at the big oak out back. I will be hanged. If anyone is bothered by it, it can be cut down and hauled away.
If the rest goes right, John Latham will contact you soon. It’s a good car. I am glad you came back. You can be proud of your boys. Your mother favors shopping on Thursdays.
Dylan was folding the note back in thirds when Nana turned to hang up the phone. She glanced at the clock, said, “Maybe you can go at lunchtime,” and then rested a hand on his shoulder.
Softer she said, “Did you see Mr. Thompson just now?” He nodded. Nana bent to drape an arm around him, and drew his head to her ample middle. She rocked gently for a moment, humming an unfamiliar song.
“I need to go talk to your daddy. Why don’t you come sit on the porch?” she bent and looked out the window, then apparently satisfied herself about something. “It is going to be a day around here.”
“Okay,” Dylan muffled from the folds of her dress. He shifted to rise from the chair, but his grandmother was squeezing him tightly. Dylan looked up. The old woman’s eyes were red, her face for a moment all open sadness. Then her jaw hardened and she released him and turned to the door, moving as fast as he had ever seen her move. She flung the screen back and stepped across the porch, not waiting for him to catch the door.
“Sit right there,” she gestured at the top step, “where I can see you son. I’ll be right back.”
A police car pulled up in front of Mr. Thompson’s a few minutes later. A single officer spoke into his radio microphone for a moment. Then he hitched himself out of the car, and noticed Dylan as he closed the door. He looked like he was going to ask something, and Dylan pointed at the side of Mr. Thompson’s house. The officer tipped his hat and moved quickly on.
Several minutes passed. The officer huffed back to his car, spoke into his microphone, and then went back around the house. Soon another police car arrived, along with an ambulance. By this time, Nana was back. Even though Dylan had had breakfast of sorts, Nana insisted on making him french toast—a rare treat. Nana was carrying Dylan’s plate to the table when his father walked in.
He had his jacket draped over his arm, and hung it over the back of his chair in the dining room. Nana said, “Would you like some french toast?” He gave her a puzzled glance.
“Um, I have to go back for just a minute. That poor old soul—” Dylan followed his father’s gaze in time to see Nana give a slight shake of her head. Sam fixed his eyes on Dylan.
“Son, are you alright?”
“Sure. Is Mr. Thompson…?”
Sam glanced up at Nana, then back at Dylan. “Mr. Thompson had a kind of an accident, and…” his voice trailed off. His father pulled the envelope with his name on it across the table to himself.
Nana spoke up. “Dylan, Mr. Thompson got hurt real bad. When the doctors came, they couldn’t make him better. He’s gone to be with God. In heaven. It is a hard thing on such a pretty morning.”
They all turned to look out the window. Dylan wondered how anyone could choose to leave the earth on a morning like this. The day’s sun was soft on the lawn, the trees, and on the vehicles gathered across the way. The air was so electric, the flashing lights seemed more like a parade stopped on the street, waiting for the majorettes to move along past the review stand. He could practically smell the cotton candy.
After school in their room, Dylan told James all he could remember. James was mad that it had happened just after he’d left that day. Dylan hadn’t intended to say anything about the note. But James was so eager to hear every detail. So Dylan told him.
“Dylan, I have to see that note.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he put it someplace safe.”
Then James’s eyes shone with a new brightness. “I got it! I know how to get him to show us the note.”
James rolled off his bed and headed for the stairs. “Let me do all the talking,” he said. Both boys made their way out toward the porch where their father and Nana were sitting on the glider.
“What would possess a man...?” Sam’s voice trailed off.
Nana’s high tone suggested anger. “Well, now that is at once a mystery and no kind of secret at all. What always possesses men who are perfectly—” Nana stopped mid-sentence when James opened the screen.
Dylan and James settled in their usual spots, James lounging on the rail, one knee resting on it, his back leaning against the modest pillar. Dylan perched on the porch, feet on the top step, braced against the opposite pillar. The four of them sat silent, the only sound the glider tracks squeaking like a protesting seagull.
“Been quite a day,” James led off. He almost never talked during the infrequent times he would join them on the porch.
“That it has,” his father replied.
“Mr. Thompson was an awful nice man,” Dylan said. James nodded.
“He was always good to us,” Nana said.
“How did you know what he’d done?” James asked his father.
“How’s that?”
“Well, Dylan said that as soon as he left for school this morning, you ran over to Mr. Thompson’s. Did he call or something?”
His father looked uneasy. Nana turned to look at Sam.