Lion Eyes       

He shouldn't have come back to Tulare.  The place held too many memories - not all of them good.  He had been away for almost twenty years, more than enough time to cage the terrors of that last night.  But Charley Bradford would never forget what occurred in that little white house at the end of Lathan Lane.  No matter how far he pushed the thoughts back he could never erase the picture of his wife lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
      
And now it had happened again.

Back then it hadn't taken the police long to charge him with murder.  DNA technology didn't exist in those days, the local law enforcement wasn't even sophisticated enough to test for gunpowder residue on Charley's hands.  Nor did they look for motive.  Even though he was working over in Porterville, the police said that he could have slipped out on his lunch break and done Connie in.  If a spouse was killed, the remaining one was going to be prosecuted for sure.  

That's what happened with Charley.  In less than six months he had been tried, found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five to life.  No one, other than the accused, and he never spoke about it, thought about the other occupant in that house.  But was it possible she had struck again?  Connie's mother had been found shot to death two months ago.

It had taken him weeks after his release to find the courage to drive the old battered Honda toward the little Central Valley town.  Charley did what they told him he was supposed to do.  He checked in with his parole officer, rented a small apartment in Lindsey and managed to get a job as mechanic in a local garage in that first week out.    He figured he had just enough time to do what he needed to do in Tulare and still be back to start his new job.  It wasn't a long drive, but he hesitated at the end of this quest, fear of what faced him slowed him down. Killing time, he stopped at a small mom-and-pop store and was sipping on a cold Dr. Pepper when the cherry red Mustang limped in with a tire gone flat.  

The girl bounced out of the open door, faded jeans clinging to slender legs.  Her top was soft denim tied in a knot beneath full breasts, revealing a smooth tanned belly.  She bent down to examine the tire, her tawny gold hair fell forward from its tuck behind delicate ears.  Then she rose with an attitude of disgust, kicked the tire and mumbled, "Ah, shit."

Charley moved toward her. When he reached her side, he asked, "Do you know if you have a spare tire for this thing?"  If he had been aiming to say anything else, her glance up at him with those golden eyes he knew so well stopped him cold.

She was older than she looked from a distance.  There were lines around her mouth, a hardness about her features that maybe only Charley could understand.  She seemed to have taken her share of the good life, if you counted cars and clothes and hairdos. But she hadn't changed.   Jill was still demanding and getting what she considered was her due.  He read it all in those eyes.

She had been such a beautiful baby, a mass of thick hair and those incredible lion eyes she'd inherited from her mother.  Back then no man could have been happier to be a father than Charley.  Connie hadn't taken to mothering too well, preferring to ride her horses than mind a fretful child.  Most mornings Charley hauled Jill over to his mother's while he worked.  It was easier than worrying about whether his child was fed or tended.  On weekends father and daughter were inseparable and as Jill grew older some people said they noted a sort of proprietary nature between the two.  

Connie said she was spoiled rotten, Charley wallowed in the attention he received from the child.  And to keep peace, because the two females in his life did not get along, he kept them apart as much as possible, taking Jill off to fish or swim or shop for those pretty dresses she just had to have, demanded that he buy.  

Charley did try to reprimand her when she sassed her mother.  The girl often yelled, calling her names he would have never used against any woman.  He was usually able to quiet them down - mostly by letting Jill have something she had been begging for, or taking her somewhere he really didn't want to go.  But by the time she was nine, there was a full-blown war being fought between mother and daughter, a war that would end in disaster.

And here she was, all grown up, looking so much like her mother that a cold chill puckered the skin on his arms as he twirled the tire iron to remove the flat.  She didn't seem to recognize him, but then why would she?  She never visited him in that place.  She had stayed here, raised by her grandmother, free and happy and wild while he had been locked up behind bars, sad, tamed.  Moving the tire to the trunk, Charley glanced at her, found those strange eyes studying him.  He ducked his head quickly.  No, it was best if she didn't know I've come back.  I'll just take care of my business and be gone.  Better to leave well enough alone, let someone else be responsible.

"You better get that fixed before you go too far.  Don't want to get caught without a spare."  He slammed the trunk, wiping his hands on a paper towel she'd offered.

"Thanks.  Are you going to be around for awhile?"  She slipped back into the car.

"Not long.  Just passing through."

She looked at him, her eyes seeming to reach inside to all of those secret places he'd thought hidden.  Then she offered a thin smile before starting the engine.  "Have a nice visit."

He didn't want to go to Floreen's Flowers, didn't want to talk about any of this, even to folks who might be sympathetic.  It had probably been a mistake to come here anyway, but he had this ache in his heart that would never be eased if he didn't visit.  So Charley stopped at the new supermarket. Those places usually had fresh flowers.  This one even had ceramic angels, like the ones Connie used to collect.  

Easing out onto a familiar back street, he slowly made his way to a stone arch in a high wall, turned in and guided the old Honda to an area to the east. He found the marker easily.  Connie was there among all of her ancestors, ones who had come to this town from England a couple of hundred years ago.  Kneeling down, Charley placed the mixed bouquet on the grassy mound.  He bowed his head.  

"Connie, please forgive me for allowing this to happen.  You didn't deserve to die.  I lost my way, I let things go too far, get out of hand. What else could I have done at the time?  Oh, Lord, was it the right thing?  This thing that has happened now . . . is this because I didn't handle it back then?  Lord, guide me . . . what do I do?" 

He heard movement behind him seconds before he heard her voice.  "I figured I'd find you here."  He turned to see Jill standing there pointing a small gun at him, her face twisted in an ugly smile of contempt.  "I knew who you were.  You haven't changed that much, you know."

"I came to ask your mother's forgiveness.  I should have seen to it that you were sent to a hospital back then."  Charley rose, clutching the angel in his hand at his side.

"Oh, you'd have liked that, wouldn't you?"  She sneered.  "You wanted to get rid of me before . . . before Mama's death.  I saw it in your face.  You and she were going to send me away and then you'd just have each other again.  But I fixed that.  And you knew it was me."

Charley nodded his head.  "I knew.  There was no break in. You were the only one in the house that day.  No one had anything against Connie - no one but you.  You hated her."

"I admit that."  She offered him a mocking smile.  "But you never said a word."

"You were so young, had your whole life before you.  And I blamed myself."

"Why?  I pulled the trigger."  It was there, in those dangerous eyes.  She didn't, at least today, want him to take any credit for what she had done. 

"I treated you like you were the most special thing in my life.  I let you twist me around until your mother was on the outside of the family circle.  She was right - I spoiled you.  And then I did the unforgivable - I  allowed you to go free.  Now I must stop this madness."

"Madness!"  She screamed.  "Grandma used to say that I was insane.  Then I shut her up.  I'll take care of you, too!"

Charley jumped to his left as his right hand flung the ceramic angel at the gun in Jill's hand.  The roar filled the air over the cemetery, then the sound in his head gave way to hysterical shrieks.  Within seconds police were pouring into the area, calling for an ambulance, assuring him that his daughter, who had been under surveillance for weeks, would be given the care she had always needed.

When they were all gone, Charley lay on the grassy mound, clutching a shard of angel wing in his shaking hand.  

And wept.