Chapter 18 Carlisle
CARLISLE
Pausing at the top of the hill, I catch my breath for a moment outside the cemetery gates—what’s left of them, at least. The fire that tore through the forest has been well and truly snuffed out now, the soaked, blackened trees standing as a testament to that fact.
But the stone walls that once stood around this place have tumbled down, either victims of the force of the water or of the heat from the fire.
Either way, there’s little left apart from the headstones pockmarking the ground below, and I push open the gate to step inside.
It creaks loudly, the only sound in the air as I close in on my father’s memorial. A lump leaps into my throat, and I swallow it down swiftly. I didn’t come here to make myself feel bad; I just want to check that his grave is still standing.
I haven’t mustered the courage to visit with my mother yet, not wanting her to know that I’m back in town, though I’m sure she’s already figured it out based on what she’s heard from the residents who have been moved back into Devin Ridge.
No doubt she’s expecting a visit from me, but there’s somewhere that I knew I needed to see first, somewhere I had to pay my respects before I took the pilgrimage up to our old home on the top of the hill.
It’s a bright, cool day in Devin Ridge, and life seems to have come pouring back into the town at large now that the threat of the fire is well and truly done with.
When I parked up at the bottom of the high street, I saw a few people cleaning up the town hall, scrubbing the stains of ash and water out of the porch.
The school is still sitting in smoking smithereens at the far end of the street, and apart from the clean-up operation to move the worst of the debris somewhere else, nothing has been done about it.
I don’t even know if they have the cash to rebuild, at least not without help from the state, and for a town as small as this one, it wouldn’t surprise me if they just send the children off to other schools in surrounding districts rather than build it all up from scratch again.
Maybe it’s for the best. Devin Ridge can connect with a little more of the real world that way, at least. But I can’t help but worry about what might come of it, if they have no choice but to travel out of town for their education.
Will the traditions of this place go with them, falling away as they reach out to other parts of the county?
It’s hard not to think so. I guess I have no right to worry about that kind of thing, given that I left this place years ago and my family has done more to harm it than most, but still, it bothers me.
Inside the cemetery, it feels like I’ve stepped into another dimension, so far removed from the outside world. I can smell the smoke here, the scent of it sinking into the rock of the walls like it’s taken up residence there.
My father’s grave is one of the newer ones, and it’s easy to make it out, the marble marker rising high out of the ground like something suited to some ancient warrior, not a small-town businessman.
I grimace at the sight of it, but stoop down before it anyway, resting a hand on the grave and staring down at his name upon it.
Christian Devin. My father. A name that has been cursed out in this town more times than I could count.
A name that, for so many people here, is synonymous with harm and hurt and loss.
Like I said to Angelie, I doubt many tears were shed on the day that he passed.
In some ways, I don’t think he deserved any.
But for all the bullshit he did to this place, he was still my father. Still the man who raised me, the man who tried to give me the best life he could. I never wanted for anything when I was growing up, he made sure of it, even if so much of it came at the expense of other people in Devin Ridge.
I can still remember when I was a kid, the way he would tell me that there was nothing I couldn’t do if I set my mind to it. Just point yourself in that direction, wind yourself up, and go, he said. As if it was that easy. Maybe to him, it was.
I wonder what he would have thought if he had seen what happened to Devin Ridge with the fires.
If he saw the school burned down, would he have rushed to help?
I like to think he would have, but I don’t even know if he would have considered it his problem.
Maybe he would have seen it as an issue for the state to deal with, sitting on his money instead of offering it to make life easier for everyone here.
He always took the view, at least in the time I knew him, that he had worked for his fortune and he deserved every cent of it.
He didn’t take kindly to people pointing out that if the tools hadn’t been handed to him by his family, he would never have gotten it off the ground, but hey, I couldn’t exactly blame him for that.
“What would you do, huh, Dad?” I murmur, as I clear some of the dirt that has gathered at the bottom of the grave, no doubt overturned by the recent fire and following flooding in the forest nearby.
The air is silent, no answer coming—not that I expected one, of course. In the distance, back in town, I can hear engines puttering this way and that, the occasional shout that carries all the way up the hill and toward the cemetery.
On the other side of town, I know Angelie is back with her children again, no doubt trying to figure out what she’s going to do about work now that her job has burned to the ground…
Something shifts inside of me when that thought crosses my mind. No. I’m done sitting back, asking my father what he would have done when I already know the answer to that damn well.
It doesn’t matter how he might have responded to this. He’s not here anymore, and the money that he spent his life hoarding isn’t his. It’s sitting in my bank account, for me to do with as I please.
And I don’t want to be the same asshole who stands back and lets this town fall into ruin when I could make a change.
I rise to my feet, hand still resting on his grave.
Damn, I could almost have sworn I heard him rolling in it, at the thought of what I’m considering right now.
But I have spent enough time as it is running from this place, trying to escape the weight that my family name lays on my shoulders when it comes to Devin Ridge.
I still carry the name of this place on my back, and isn’t it about time that I did something worthwhile with it?
I head to the gate, pushing it shut behind me as I take the path back down to my truck.
The guys are all back at the cabin, and I don’t even know if they’ll be awake yet—might not even have noticed that I was gone.
A stir of certainty pulses through me. I know that I need them if I’m going to pull this off.
They’re as tied to this place as I am, not just because we all grew up here, but because the woman we can’t seem to move on from lives here too.
With children who belong to one of us, no less.
We don’t get to just pull up sticks and move on like we would have done with any other disaster.
This time, we have to stick around for the rebuild too.
I reach the top of the high street and pause there for a moment, casting my gaze down over the small crowd bustling to and fro before me.
A few of them I recognize, and I notice a couple shooting looks in my direction, like they don’t want to acknowledge me standing there.
I can’t blame them exactly, knowing that a few of them, at least, likely found themselves at the wrong end of my father’s firing spree a few decades ago.
This place has a long memory, whether I like it or not, so I better give them something new to focus on if I want to distract from everything that came before.
“Oh, if it isn’t Carlisle Devin!”
A voice cuts through my distraction, and I glance around to see Margaret, the woman who runs the grocery store at the top of the street, standing in front of me with her hands planted on her hips and a smile on her face.
Given that she had a business of her own, she wasn’t hit too hard by what my father did, and never seemed to hold it against me, at least.
“Hey, Margaret,” I greet her, bowing my head slightly in greeting. “Good to see you. Been a while.”
“It has,” she agrees, tilting her hat back slightly so she can look at me. There are deep creases around her eyes, but other than that, she looks the same as she always did, down to the cigarette dangling from between her fingers.
“I heard you and the boys came back to help with the fires,” she tells me, lowering her voice slightly, as though she doesn’t want anyone else to hear.
I nod. “Yeah, we did…”
“Well, dang,” she remarks, shaking her head. “That’s quite a claim to fame.”
“You wouldn’t know it, with the way people are looking at me here,” I reply, trying to force a laugh, though I’m not sure it comes across as anything other than nervous.
“Oh, let them think what they want,” she replies, waving a hand. “I always knew you were a different man to your father, Carlisle—ever since you were a boy, you always had this way about you, even when you were trying to steal candy bars from my store…”
“You still remember that?”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaims jovially. “I have your face pinned up on the wall, right with everyone else we won’t serve.”
I manage a laugh. It’s a relief to know that, at least for some people, my presence here isn’t some ridiculous affront they’re just trying to find their way past.
“Don’t let them bother you,” she adds, waving her hand back down along the street. “People’ll think what they want. You know what you did. And you probably saved a lot of these people’s lives and homes, even if they don’t know it.”
I follow her gesture, looking down at the crowds of people below.
“You think you might be able to put up a sign about that in your store?” I joke lightly. “See if that convinces any of them that I’m not persona non grata?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replies, and she pats my arm before she retreats into the store once more, stubbing out her cigarette at the last possible moment before she ducks inside.
I lift a hand to bid her farewell, and make my way down to the bottom of the street, where the school—or what remains of it—is standing.
It’s bad. Bad enough that I doubt whatever is built in this spot in the future will look anything like the building that has housed so many generations of this town’s children, provided education and support for practically every young person in this place in the last half century or so.
The place that Angelie intended to teach her children too.
Our children. I can’t help but think of them like that, though I know I have no business viewing them through that lens until the paternity test has been taken.
I can almost picture what it would look like rebuilt.
Not the same as before, sure, but something new—something different.
Something more modern, to make life a little easier for those who pass through.
Something that might give the kids of this town a better chance to make a name for themselves somewhere beyond the county boundaries.
I feel a smile spreading up my lips before I can stop it.
My bank account, for the first time in a long time, doesn’t feel like a burden anymore.
It feels like an opportunity. It’s not the one that my father might have taken, far from it, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t.
If my children are going to be raised here—if their mother is going to live here—then it’s only fair that I do everything in my power to make sure I provide for them in any way I can.
I head back to my truck, mind fizzing with ideas.
With no new calls to pull us away from Devin Ridge, we could stick around for a while, do some work, make a change.
I know that the guys would be glad to stay.
Even if none of them have said it, none of us have broached the topic of what happened between Angelie and us, I know they’re no more in a rush to get out of here than I am, and that any excuse to stick around will be met with open arms.
I roll down the window of the truck as I drive back toward the cabin, letting the warm summer air rush through the window. In the distance, I can see the green glow of foliage, the stuff untouched by the fire, studded through the blackened trees.
There is still life here, still hope here, despite everything.
And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that it doesn’t end there.