“Maybe, but you don’t sound very politically correct.” He laughed heartily. “Billy Dee Grizzle is definitely not politically correct.”
“How, I mean why, did you change your mind about hunting?” I asked him. “I overheard you telling the Congressman last night that you, yourself, used to hunt.”
He seemed genuinely surprised at my question. “Don’t you read the papers?”
I must have blushed with embarrassment. As much as I love to read, I am too cheap to have either the Harrisburg or Pittsburgh papers delivered. As for the little weekly rag published in Hernia, its lead story that week concerned a rash of ulcerated udders on Amos Troyer’s dairy farm.
Billy Dee was too polite to let me squirm in my ignorance. “It happened almost exactly four years ago,” he explained quickly. “We’d just moved up here from Texas. I was deer hunting.” His eyes left my face and seemed to focus on the quilting frame across the room. “I had my daughter with me. Jennifer Mae. She was eleven years old.” He paused.
“Jennifer is a pretty name,” I said to encourage him.
He nodded. “She was my only kid. Her mama died when she was just seven. Anyway, Jenny Mae got tired of hunting and wanted to go back and rest in the pickup. I let her.” He swallowed. “It weren’t all that far. The pickup, I mean. She would’ve been all right, except that she got kinda turned around.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. Jenny Mae never made it back to that damned truck. She was wearing this white bow in her hair, like the one her mama used to put in for her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her not to wear it. I didn’t think there was a need for it, really. She was with me the whole time, except for then, and I was wearing an orange vest.”
He paused again, and this time, dreading what he was about to say, I did not encourage him further.
He went on anyway. “It was me, her own daddy, who mistook that bow for a white tail. It was me that shot my own little girl off this earth.”
I expected him to break down and sob, but he didn’t. “Not that it mattered in comparison to Jenny Mae’s death, but it woulda been ruled an accident if it hadn’t been for them folks over there.”
“Jeanette, Joel, and Linda?”
“Especially her.” I just knew he meant Jeanette. “I still don’t know how, but immediately they were all over the place like smoked-out hornets. They had the press with them and before I could catch my breath I was charged with involuntary manslaughter. I didn’t stand no chance in court.”
I gave him a chance to catch his breath and waited quietly until he resumed his tale.
“I got sent up for three years. I know it ain’t much, and I probably even deserved it. But the thing is, Miss Yoder, they made out like I’d almost intended to kill Jenny Mae.”
“They actually said that?”
“No, not in so many words. But that’s what it came down to. They made me out to be some mean, horrible monster who didn’t care about what happened to his little girl. They said that by taking her along with me, I was not only choosing to break the law, but I’d publicly given up all rights to be her father.”
He rubbed the corners of his eyes with the palm of his hand, although I could see no tears. “I think the worst thing is that they didn’t give me no time to react or mourn her death. I was in shock, Miss Yoder. I was absolutely stunned. I just couldn’t believe what had happened. And then they were on me. That’s what I mean by not being able to catch my breath.”
“I see.”
“I don’t even remember her funeral, Miss Yoder. I can’t even say for sure if I was there. Miss Yoder, Jeanette and them other two robbed me of my daughter’s death.” He made a dismissing motion with his right hand. “Of course I can’t expect you to understand that.”
“But I do understand.” I really did. When Mama and Papa were killed in that horrible accident, I wanted to mourn for them with every fiber of my being. I wanted to feel the pain completely, for as long as I needed to, before having to learn how to cope with it and get on with my life. But of course I didn’t have the luxury of orchestrating my own emotional recovery, not with a burden like Susannah to deal with. Following our parents’ death, Susannah acted out so completely that ninety-nine percent of my energy was diverted to her and her recovery. Susannah was still a long way from recovery, and I had yet to mourn. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell Billy Dee all that. We Swiss do not readily share our emotions, and certainly not with comparative strangers.