Read Online Beneath the Weight of Sadness by Gerald L. Dodge - Free Book Online Page A

there and gone in an instant.
    “Go through Truman’s things and then ask that ridiculous question. No…don’t you dare go in that room!”
    I could hear the tick of a clock somewhere and I had to wonder who’d taken the time to wind it. Like before, silence went on too long.
    “Tell me about Persia, Mrs. Engroff.”
    Again, there was a short, derisive laugh.
    “You don’t know for yourself, Mr. Parachuk? You haven’t lived here long enough to know how egregiously close minded these people are?”
    A tear rolled down her cheek. She drained the wine in her glass and wiped the moisture away with her frail, white hand.
    “Do you think a lot of the people here resented Truman’s lifestyle?”
    “You mean the fact that he was…is gay? You can say it. Watch how easy it is to say: gay, gay, gay…or fag or cocksucker or…”
    She stood again and went to the decanter and poured another glass. She emptied half of it while she stood there looking beyond me. I don’t normally feel emasculated by people—especially women—but now I felt the urge to stand, to meet her gaze at eye level. I didn’t.
    “Your husband said you and Truman were very close—that you had a unique relationship that maybe would help us know more about who might have wanted to harm him.”
    “Have you gone through the Persia phonebook? That might be a place to start.”
    I tried a different tack.
    “Mrs. Engroff, tell me about the relationship between Carly Rodenbaugh and Truman. I’m told they were best friends until recently.”
    She finished the rest of the wine and placed the glass on the coffee table in front of her. She folded her hands together as if in prayer.
    “I remember when Carly came to Truman’s sixth birthday party. She’s only a few days younger than he. Even then I could tell they were meant for each other. There were the usual amount of children in attendance…before Truman became…well, Truman.” A sadness crossed her face. “We had games and prizes, and all the children ran and played in the lawns out back with a tent set up and a clown we hired. I could tell the children were having a grand time.”
    I watched her relive the entire moment and for the first time she looked tranquil.
    “And the only person Truman wanted to be with was Carly, and she him.”
    She looked past me at the pictures on the piano, and I could see that in those few moments Truman was alive for her once again.
    “Just imagine that, Mr. Parachuk. Just imagine how someone that young could already know his only true friend was there.”
    “So I would assume she would know if he had enemies. People who might want to hurt him.”
    I’d interrupted her recalling the past and it was a mistake. She looked at me with a kind of incredulity. “Are you kidding me? Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? This is Persia! These people” and she looked at me accusingly “hate anything that hasn’t been sanctified by them. Truman isn’t them. ”
    I knew what she meant, in a sense. I’d grown up in Persia when it was a blue-collar town and it had always been conservative, even after it gentrified. Part of the gentrification was brought on by white flight, part of it was some desire to stake a claim to a piece of land, like the pilgrims, I guess. But whatever the forces behind the cementing of Persia’s values, there wasn’t much tolerance. Vagrants were arrested; drunks were sent to rehab; kids with nose piercings, tattoos or shaved heads were sent to boarding schools. I knew. I’d seen it all. And now here was this woman whose son had been found face down in trampled mud with his head caved in, his body so broken from blows even the local coroner had to step away for a moment, all because he was gay, I supposed.
    “Mrs. Engroff, I know you think maybe there was something you or your husband could’ve done to prevent this, but there wasn’t. Now the only thing you can do is help me find who did this to Truman. It won’t bring him back,