Ava's Gift. Jason Mott

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      “On who? The volunteers?”

      “Yep,” John said. “Nobody volunteers for any damned thing. Not in this lifetime. They got mouths to feed, just like you do. If they’re here, and if they’re working, they’re getting paid. Likely as not they’re working for those reporters out there.” He motioned toward the window through which he and Macon had been looking. There was disgust in his gesture. “Chances are they’re getting paid for information. Little tidbits they can sell to the tabloids or whatever. They show up here, work, listen, watch and then when their shift is over they head out there and debrief.” John sighed. “Oldest trick in the book,” he said.

      Macon thought for a moment. “Suppose I knew that, but I hadn’t really paid any attention to it.”

      “Got any of them volunteering to work close to your house?”

      “A couple,” Macon said.

      “Yeah,” John replied. “Those are the ones getting paid the most.”

      “Think I should be worried?”

      John waved his hand dismissively. “I wouldn’t. Yeah, they’re out to make a buck off you, but I don’t think a single person out there would do it at the expense of your family. They’ll keep you safe, but they’ll make a little gravy if they can. I’d just be careful who I talked to,” he said.

      Macon watched John as he spoke. The old sheriff shifted in his seat and licked his lips as he glanced around the office. “Are we going to get down to business anytime soon?” Macon asked. “I know that, as Southern folks, we’ve made taking the long road in conversation into an art form, but my world is too crazy right now to spend much more time on whatever it is you’re trying to bring up, John. I gotta make the drive up to Asheville and, like I said, with the road the way it is, it’s going to take hours.”

      John squinted and leaned in toward Macon. “How did she do it?” he asked. “How did she heal that boy, really?”

      “I don’t know,” Macon said. “Just like I told the reporters, the doctors, all those biologists they brought in, the twenty different preachers that have called me, the bloggers who keep emailing me. My story hasn’t changed, John. I don’t know anything about what’s going on here.”

      “Bullshit,” John said gruffly. “We both know that you can bury a dead body in the distance between what a person knows and what a person pretends not to know. And I have a hard time getting my mind around the notion that you didn’t have any kind of inkling about any of this.” He shook his head. “No, I think you knew and you wanted to keep her...it...this thing that she’s able to do, you wanted to keep it under the radar.”

      Macon sighed. “Everybody on this planet seems to think that, even if it’s not true.”

      “You were wrong to keep it secret,” John said. “My wife,” he began. His fingers picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on his pants. “I loved my wife,” John said. “She was a good woman, a kind woman. Better than this world deserved, if you ask me. She was in that hospital a week before the end. Doctors did everything they could to save her. At least, that’s what I thought.” When he finally looked up from his fidgeting hand and into Macon’s eyes, there was a dark mixture of blame and bitterness in his eyes.

      “I’m not going to have this conversation with you, John,” Macon said.

      “It’s just that you could have helped,” John replied, and this time he was no longer the hard-nosed sheriff; he was simply a man who had lost his wife two years ago and now, very suddenly, believed it could have happened another way.

      “John...” Macon said.

      John snorted. “Let me guess,” he said. “You don’t know how she did it. You didn’t know anything about her being able to heal people, right?” Before Macon could answer, John continued. “Whatever story you stick to, you’re going to have to answer that question a hell of a lot more. You might not believe it, but those reporters out there paid me five hundred dollars just for walking in here,” he said. “I told them I wouldn’t have anything to tell them when I came out, and that’s still true. But I’m not the only person in this world who, now that they know what you’ve been hiding, will ask questions about what right you have to keep something like this to yourself.”

      “They’re already asking those questions, John,” Macon replied. “As for them paying you to come in here, well, do what you feel you need to do. I know how much your pension is, and it’s not enough. Everyone’s got to make a living.”

      John nodded emphatically. “They do,” he said. “Each and every one of us, from the day we’re born to the day we die, we’ve got to live. And we’ve got to make a living. Times been tough lately.”

      Macon leaned back in his chair. “What else is there, John?” he asked. There was less patience in Macon’s voice now. He respected the old man, thought of him as a good friend, but he saw in John’s eyes that a shade of resentment still remained there. He was still thinking of his wife, Mabel, still imagining what might have been, still imagining what he believed Ava could have done.

      John stared at him across the table briefly. The old sheriff’s expression shifted from surprise to acceptance to anger to something akin to embarrassment. John took a deep breath. When he let it go, the words that followed slid out of him like an apology. “There’s this preacher coming to town.”

      “We got bushels of them already,” Macon replied. “Could sell preachers by the pound if we wanted right now. Preachers and reporters, whole churches trying to set up camp out there. You name it, we got it.”

      “No,” John said. “This one is different. Bigger. If I can talk you into sitting with him for a while...” His voice trailed off.

      “Who is he?”

      “Reverend Isaiah Brown. You’ve probably seen him on TV.”

      “Can’t say I’ve heard of him. But I don’t really keep up with reverends and I haven’t really watched TV since they canceled Seinfeld.”

      “I’m not the type to ask for favors,” John said, not pausing for the joke. “And I damned sure don’t beg anyone for anything—”

      Macon held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not going to make you say the words,” he said. “I’ll think about it. How much will he give you for that?”

      At last, the fidgeting and nervousness stopped. “Don’t know,” he said. “But I figure that’s got to be worth something.”

      “Good,” Macon said.

      John stood. “I’ll let him know,” he said. Then: “Just tell me, Macon. Promise me. Promise me you didn’t know. That she couldn’t have helped my wife. If you say it one more time, I’ll believe it, and I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

      The hardness and intimidation was stripped away from him. He was a man trapped between the solace that he had done everything in his power to save his wife’s life, and the possibility that, even though he didn’t know it at the time, he could have done more. Every brick of self-forgiveness that he had placed around his heart since his wife’s death was loosened, and all it would take was a word from Macon for it come to crashing down, leaving John to hate not only Macon but, most of all, himself.

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