About 30 minutes before she died, my mother named me Zachariah. I spent my childhood surrounded by her things in the home in which she, herself, grew up. As for my father, he left me the surname Grey and, according to everyone, my face. But the only tangible relics were from his old sea bag — a tarnished brass lock and its key.
Gram did her best, setting an example by praying over everything from scraped knees to unpaid bills. I’ll never forget how she somehow managed to buy me some nice used terrariums for my 13th birthday. Of course, from my father I got nothing. Not a card. Not even a phone call. That weekend, I went down to the lake and held the lock in my hand, wanting to drop it into my reflection and leave it. Instead I just spat into the water then turned to the bicycle rack.
I pulled my chain through the wheel and fastened the lock. In the distance, I heard Susie’s bell as she pedaled closer. Her father ran a counseling center and worked long hours, so after school and on weekends she hung with me. When we’d stop by Gram’s shop, the customers just raved when they found out who Susie was; Dr. Preston is such an inspiration. He’s so brave to be rearing you by himself.
They’d never say such things about Gram. Oh, they’d tip her well, once she’d cut and styled their hair, and they’d bring old clothes for me. But, as young as I was, I could tell from the way they barely met her eyes, they regarded Ruby Watson as a thing to be pitied, not admired.
“Hey, Zach.” Susie dismounted, then secured her bicycle. Her tan was offset by light blue overalls and a sunflower-patterned shirt. With her hair pony-tailed, I could see how her brow furrowed, putting a little slanted dent below her forehead. “Are we ready?” Her backpack clinked as she shouldered its rainbow-colored straps.
I nodded, adjusting my own. “Thanks for bringing the extra jars.”
“Sure, birthday boy.” She smiled. “Now, let’s go fill those terrariums.”
••
”Zach! I caught it!” Halfway along the nature trail, Susie trapped a fence lizard in a Mason jar. With mottled gray scales that blended perfectly against an oak and its stubby, triangular head, the lizard seemed to me a minuscule dinosaur. Holding it overhead, we examined the throat and belly to find the dark blue patches. Definitely male. I popped the lid with an ice pick, labeled it, Sceloporus undulatus, and placed it in my backpack.
Susie tugged the sleeve of my Atlanta Braves jersey. “Let’s rest a minute.”
We walked to a fallen oak. Sitting, I caught a flash of movement in the grass. “A tiger salamander!” I scooped the amphibian into my palms. “Ambystoma tigrinum.” It wriggled, emptying its bowels.
Susie leaned in. “Hop-etology, right?”
I smiled at her joke. “Herpetology.”
“Yeah, frogs and lizards.”
“Amphibians and reptiles, yes.” I scraped my soiled palm with a twig.
Susie stroked the creature’s black and yellow head. “I’ve never seen one before.”
I realized she wasn’t squeamish — didn’t falter with the lizard, and here she was touching a salamander.
“Can I hold it?” she asked.
“Sure.” I set the prize into the cup of her hand.
“Get a picture of me with it.” She dropped the backpack from her shoulders and, with her free hand, passed it to me.
I took the backpack and fished for her camera. “Hold it in front of you.”
“Does that prince trick only work with frogs, or will any amphibian do?”
“Try it and see.”
To my surprise, she did. I snapped the photo.
“Hmmm. Nothing.” She looked at the salamander with mock disappointment. “Oh well, maybe someday my prince will come.”
Maybe I’m right here in front of you. I wanted to say it, but was too afraid.
Susie finally broke the silence. “Now let’s get a picture of you with the lizard.”
••
Years passed, and eventually Gram began her swift, inevitable decline.
“Zachary.”
I bent across the hospital bed. “I’m here, Gram.”
“Maybe your father will come to the funeral. Maybe the two of you can …”
“Don’t waste what breath you have on him, OK?”
She wrung her hands. “Oh, I hope Eugene comes. I pray that he and you …”
“Hush now. You need to get your sleep.”
“Nonsense.” She gave a wry smile. “I’ll be asleep in the Lord before long. That’s the only sleep I need.”
I lowered my head. “I don’t want to hear that, and I don’t want to talk about my father.”
“Oh, Zachariah. Not today. Let’s not spend it like this.”
And I realized what she seemed to know already; these were our last hours together.
Tenderly, into the crook of my arm, she placed a hand as withered as a flower pressed between the pages of her Bible. “If you don’t want to talk about the past, then at least tell me about your future. Have you and Susie set a date?”
••
Leaning over Gram’s coffin, he’d actually had the audacity to place a rose in one of her hands. He muttered quietly, once more giving voice, I supposed, to the goodbye he said long ago. Eventually he walked over to where I stood.
“You gonna be all right?” Eugene Grey, the man who left when I was 2, put a hand on my shoulder.
I could smell he’d been drinking, and it seemed everyone in the funeral home was watching. I didn’t pull away. Pastor Jenkins discretely nodded from where he stood, talking to Sue and her father. Finally, I answered, “Sure.”
Eugene squeezed my shoulder. “Son, I want you to know I’m sorry. For everything. I knew Ruby would give you the care I couldn’t.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I don’t.”
He dropped his hand, wisely changed the subject, “You gonna marry that girl?”
“I’ve asked her. She said yes.”
“Mind if I come to the wedding?”
“I don’t care.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I suppose you want to meet her.”
••
To gather data for my graduate thesis, Sue and I relocated for a summer stint of field work in the Okefenokee. She would start teaching high school English in the fall, and Eugene followed us for some reason. He was staying at a shelter, which Sue hated, but the cabin we’d been provided had barely room for two. Besides which, I doubted the park officials would want a drunk hanging around any more than I did.
“You know, you look so sad in these pictures.” Sue was at the small, wooden table, perusing our wedding album. Most of our belongings were back at UGA, in storage; the rest was still waiting to be unpacked.
“It was the happiest day of my life.” I took the crudely fashioned chair beside her.
“Well Eugene’s a chipper best man, but you’re the most solemn groom I’ve ever seen. We should have waited.”
“Gram wasn’t coming back.”
Her forehead dimpled. “And I pressured you to include your father. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He’d showed up sober for both rehearsal dinner and wedding, actually gave a decent toast, and even smiled when I handed him the token gift, a tarnished brass lock with a fresh inscription: What you left behind.
I kissed the slanted dent between Sue’s eyebrows. “It’s OK. It made him happy. You’ve befriended him, which is more than I can do.”
She was quiet a moment, then said, “Do you think I wasn’t angry at my mother for leaving me? You think I didn’t blame myself?”
“That’s different. Your mother died of leukemia. My father left.”
“Maybe he had reasons we don’t know about.”
“My mama died giving birth. He left because he couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
She closed the album. “I don’t think he blames you at all.”
“Can we just drop it, please?”
She took out her cell phone. “I can call Daddy if you’d rather talk to him.”
“No, Suze, I don’t want to talk to Clifford.” I got up to head outside. “Not to anyone.”
••
We were on the jon-boat, passing beneath a stand of towering cypress adorned in swags of Spanish moss. I killed the motor, then paddled the rest of the way.
“Lo! All grow old and die —but see again, how on the faltering footsteps of decay youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth in all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees wave not less proudly that their ancestors moulder beneath them.”
“Who’s that, Shakespeare?” I asked.
Sue grinned. “Not every poem is Shakespeare, darling. It’s by an American poet, William Cullen Bryant.”
“It’s a nice one.” Dragging the paddle, I turned us from an outstretched limb with its clustered nest of busy, black-winged wasps. “What’s it called?”
“A Forest Hymn.”
I took it all in, the canopy of trees she serenaded, her face bright with sunlight reflecting from the tannin-darkened water. Why couldn’t every moment be like this one? I tied off to a worn stump and took out a pH meter.
“Look. It’s our lizard.” Sue pointed to an oak.
I smiled, noticing the fence lizard bobbing up and down, a male trying to impress the ladies with his pushups.
“You can even see the blue patches,” she said.
I slipped a probe into the water, recorded the pH and water temp. “I didn’t know that was our lizard.”
“Remember how I helped fill your terrariums?”
“Oh, I remember, I just wasn’t sure you did.”
She smiled. “Are we going to fish today?”
I put away the probe. “If you want.”
We pulled in sunfish and channel cat. Sue caught a small snapping turtle, which I tagged and released. After a while she took her camera and snapped a few pictures. All in all, a perfect day. As we were getting ready to leave, she asked, “Next time can we bring Eugene?”
I had vetoed the idea so many times. Maybe I should give a little. “We’ll see.”
••
Eugene yelled above the motor, “Hey, thanks for bringing me!”
“No problem.” I was giving him a test run, to see if he was really ready to bring along with Sue.
We trolled toward a mound-shaped nest of mud, leaves, and rotting detritus, provoking the mother, a nine-foot alligator, which moved to intercept. Dark eyes glistened, protruding above the skull and out of the water, while rows of gray ridges stretched out behind. Throttling back, I turned down an adjacent gully
Once we were a good distance from the nest, I pulled up to a water oak and tied off. As I took out equipment, Eugene smiled. It occurred to me how old he looked: haggard-eyed, face eroded by hard years, his nose bulbous as a diseased root.
“You know, that Sue’s a good woman,” he said. “Brave and true, like your mother —and grandmother.”
My jaw clenched. “Whatever you say.”
“Son, there are a few things I need to say.”
I busied myself with water testing. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
Eugene sighed, took off his cap, ran a hand through thinning hair. “Your Gram ever tell you how your mother and I met?”
I eased a probe over the side. “She was visiting her cousins in Pensacola, where you were stationed. You kept in touch through letters, and when your four years were up you followed her to Albany.” I took a logbook, jotted down the dissolved oxygen.
Eugene put his cap back on and reached around his neck. Instead of dog tags, the necklace was weighted with his old lock and key, though now both were polished bright, reflecting sunlight into my eyes. “I was glad to see you had these. That you had held on to at least some piece of me.”
I looked away, blinking. Stowing the probe, I took out my fishing rods and tackle box. “Want to cast a while?” Maybe it would give him something to do besides talk.
“It has been a long time.” Eugene slipped the lock back under his shirt. Taking a rod, he rigged it, cast the plastic worm and started reeling. “Anyway, I got a job and your mother and I were married. Things were good, and when Beth told me she was going to have a baby, well, I’d never been so happy in my life.”
I kept silent, just casting a top-water lure.
Snatching suddenly upward, he bowed his rod severely. “Whoa! Already got one.” With hook set, he worked the fish toward us, alternately reeling and giving slack. I cranked in my line and took out the dip-net as a largemouth broke the surface, thrashing.
“Don’t you throw that worm.” Excitement lit Eugene’s face.
Once he worked it alongside, I scooped the fish. Holding the net between us, I grudgingly admitted, “That’s big enough to mount.”
He took the bass, grinning. “Yeah, but she’s fat in the belly. Got eggs to lay.” With a pair of needle-nosed pliers he gently worked the hook free and handed her to me. “Get a feel of that.”
I hefted the fish again then handed her back, and he released her over the side. We watched as she turned the surface with a flick of her tail.
I let out a slow breath, took up my rod and cast again. “So, you were about to tell me how Mama died, and you just couldn’t stand the sight of me, right?”
The light left Eugene’s face. “No.” He adjusted his worm and threw beside a cypress knee. “She had a miscarriage, Zach. Didn’t know about that, did you?”
I shook my head. Snagging a lily pad, I lightly tugged free as a leopard frog gave a startled croak, diving away.
“Nobody knew except us and Ruby, and we never told her what the doctors said. They told us Beth shouldn’t get pregnant again. Actually wanted to tie her tubes, but she wouldn’t let them. She wanted to be a mama so bad, and I’d made sure she knew how much I wanted a son.” He reeled in, cast. “Two years later she was pregnant again, with you.”
I absently worked my lure. “And then she died giving birth to me.”
“She got to hold you, named you even — after her father. But, yes, she died. I blamed myself, for putting her at risk, for not realizing how dangerous childbirth could be. If we had just listened to the doctors … .” Eugene worked his bait in, set the rod down. “But there was the flip side, of course. I did have you and loved you so much, but then I’d feel guilty for that. I started drinking. One day, Ruby came to keep you while I went to work, like she always did, and found me passed out. You were standing in your crib, crying. Soon afterwards I gave her custody. Said I’d come back when I got straightened out, but years went by and with each one I got worse, not better. I was in a halfway house in Atlanta when she finally caught up with me. Sent a letter, pictures of you and Sue, and a quote from Corinthians of all things.”
It was Gram’s favorite scripture, 1st Corinthians 13, and one of the few I remembered. Her voice was the one that paraphrased in my head: “Love is patient, kind … keeps no record of wrongs … endures all things … hopes all things. … Love never fails.”
Eugene sighed. “I made it into town just in time for Ruby’s funeral.”
I wondered, was all of this supposed to make me feel sorry for him? I wanted to lash out, tell him he got everything he deserved. I wanted to call him weak and selfish and curse him for leaving like he did, regardless of his reasons. Instead I somehow managed to hold my tongue. I reached into the cooler and offered him a soda.
He took it. “When you asked me to be your best man, I almost declined. I’d been anything but. Then, Sue smiled at me, and I couldn’t turn her down.” He opened his can and drank. “During the ceremony, I kept thinking about you as a little boy, wishing I had been there to see you grow up, to give you guidance, advice. But I can’t turn back time. I …”
“Eugene.” At the time, I figured I was just trying to give him what he wanted, so he’d eventually shut up. But maybe it was something more, like the echoes of Gram’s faith, or Sue’s gentle promptings. Whatever it was, I somehow choked out the words, “Anything you want to give me, go ahead.”
“All right then,” he said, reaching around his neck. “I’ll start with this.”
••
After seeing Eugene off, I returned to the truck, considering everything he’d said. How none of it was my fault, how he wanted to make things right, that he would stop drinking, and that he really was ready to change.
But what if he didn’t? And if he did, would that really make a difference? Was it even possible to overcome our past? I rubbed my temples. Even if he did deserve everything he got, was it my job to keep making him pay? I gripped the steering wheel. Maybe Gram’s unfinished prayer was finally being answered. Maybe God was actually trying to give me and Eugene a second chance, if I’d just take it.
With a trembling hand, I turned the ignition. But before putting the truck in gear, I reached into my shirt pocket, felt my hand steady as it curled around a chunk of cool, smooth metal. Pressing my fingertips to the engraved surface, I did what I hadn’t done in years and bowed my head. I haltingly uttered the first real prayer Gram taught me: “Our … Father …”
Suddenly, though heavy as brass in my chest, my heart felt like a lock with its key finally sliding into place —and turning.
