Free (2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery by Charles Martin Page A

were swinging on the tire swing, our faces sticky with watermelon juice, trying to stay away from Unc's crazed pet turkey, Bob. Unc had just pulled into the drive, covered in horse smell, dirt, and honesty. He kissed Lorna and was repacking his trailer for the next day when Uncle Jack pulled in behind him. He drove a new dark-blue Cadillac and wore a striped silk suit, cuffed pants, Italian leather loafers, Armani tie, and gold cuff links through French cuffs. The town zero and the town hero-as different as sunshine and rain.

    Unc was working paycheck to paycheck, known around town as the prodigal who'd never come home and who'd robbed both his family and most of the town blind. The pardon had done little to change that. Upon his incarceration, Unc had been fired from the bank and Zuta Lumber, removed as a junior elder in the church, and kicked out of both the Rotary and the country club. Uncle Jack was the respectable one-president of the bank, president of Zuta Lumber, elder in his church, and founding member of the Glynn County Rotary, not to mention being rather wealthy.
    He'd come to pick up Tommye.
    At midnight the night before, Tommye had appeared at our kitchen door. And because she was just eight, that meant she'd run across the Zuta through the dark to get to us. I stood in the bathroom, running her a hot bath and wondering, Ran across the Zuta? What could be worse than five miles of darkness and lightning? Whatever it was had written itself all over her face. She walked in, her hair streaking down over her face, her feet covered in gumbo clay, and her long flannel gown dirty and torn from falling.
    Aunt Lorna got her bathed and fed her some soup, and Unc put her in my bed and spread a pallet on the floor for me. I lay awake most of the night watching her twitch and listening to her talk in her sleep. The next morning the police showed up, sat Tommye on the porch, and started asking her a bunch of questions. She just sat there, said nothing, and looked at me. That same morning, the front page of the paper showed a picture of her dead brother. He'd had an accident, and a bullet went up through his head. The article went on to say that medics had to give Jack a sedative to calm him down. Witnesses say he was pretty distraught. The paper described him as "inconsolable."

    Pretty soon Unc built bunk beds, and for the next several years, Tommye slept in the bottom bunk more nights than not. I don't know if this heightened the strain between Unc and his brother or just brought it out of the closet, but at any rate, whenever they were in the same room you could cut the tension with a knife. I think Willee and Jack would just as soon forget each other, but the fact that Tommye spent more time at our house than her own forced an uneasy truce between them.
    Short of building a prison, Jack couldn't stop his daughter from escaping their house. For some reason, the two of them were like oil and water. She-along with an older brother-were given to him by his first wife. After her, he'd courted four more-somehow escaping more children. He never made much of a fuss over Tommye not staying at home. As more and more women became his wives, matched by the number who quietly filed for divorce, he became less vocal about it. Maybe it was easier to not have to explain a little girl running around to future prospects.
    If Uncle Jack ever beat her, I never saw any signs of it. He was a lot of things-mostly a mystery-but violent was never one of them. And I looked. As did Unc-and I'm pretty sure if he had found any signs, that uneasy truce would have ended.
    Tommye was something special-a quiet, pug-nosed, country girl with an accent that could melt butter and make old men forget their aches and pains. She made all As without really trying, was named allstate as pitcher on the girls' softball team, played the leading role for three years running in the school drama production, and was elected homecoming queen her senior year. If her