Left for Alive

by Tom Hogan

  The air between them seemed to spark, but neither face changed expression. Finally, Josh broke the eye contact by getting out of the bed. Clad in a t-shirt and underwear, he started towards Alexis. She stood up as he approached, her hands dangling uselessly at her side, fingers apart and tense.

  Josh stopped in front of her. “Please move.”

  She saw, with a mix of anger and confusion, that she was between him and the door, which held a pair of jeans on a hook. “Where are you going?”

  “To see my brother.”

  She rocked slightly. “He didn’t…”

  Josh looked at her impatiently. Then, in a sudden move, he pressed her arms against her side, lifted her, and deposited her four feet to the side. He grabbed the jeans and slid them on. “He had no business telling you.” He started towards the door, then turned back. “And you had no business asking.”

  Paul didn’t look up as the trailer door opened. His back to the door, he continued to pack in calm, deliberate motions. “I’m gone. But if you want the satisfaction of throwing me out, go ahead.”

  Josh shut the door behind him. “You want to tell me why?”

  Paul turned around. “I didn’t intend to. It just…” Josh’s hand whipped across Paul’s face, the thin hard slap filling the trailer. Paul stood immobile, his face pinkening.

  “I’ll take that one, Josh, but that’s it.”

  Josh’s hand flashed out again, slapping him on the other side. “You don’t tell me what you’ll take and what you won’t. Not after what you did.”

  They stood there, two feet apart, breathing heavily. “It just came out. But once it did, I wasn’t sorry.” He took a step forward, as if to show Josh he wasn’t afraid of him. “I asked her to move down to LA with me and she said no.” He turned his head slightly, eyeing Josh. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you surprised in years. Is it because I asked or because she said no?”

  “Just tell me why.”

  “Because she wanted you, goddamn it. It took all the guts I had to ask her. And when I do, I get taken down. By my brother, no less.”

  “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “The hell you didn’t. We should’ve just set a third chair at the table for you.” He stared hard. “You’re always there over my shoulder, Josh. I can’t handle prison, you can. I go into modeling, you save people’s lives. Okay, that’s how it is—I can live with that. But when it comes to women, I win and you lose. And now even that isn’t true.”

  “So you tell her I carved a girl up, just to get back at me?”

  “I told her the truth. Look, Josh—I’m sorry I hurt you but I’m not sorry I told her. It’s out now. You don’t need to be afraid of the past. You can get on with your life.”

  Josh almost smiled. “You’re good, Paulie. You tell someone I care about that I’m a butcher, then you tell me it’s for my own good? I don’t what’s scarier—that you might actually believe that, or that you expect me to.”

  Paul looked down. “It wasn’t that way, Josh. You weren’t there.”

  “But you were, Paulie. You were.”

  Alexis was up early the next day, watching Josh’s cabin door. When he started up to the L for breakfast, she left her porch and moved to intercept him. But his pace and his refusal to acknowledge her sent her back to her cabin, where she waited until Josh and Clark finished breakfast and started out to work on the firebreaks.

  At three o’clock he announced to Clark that he was done for the day. Clark nodded and kept on working. Zeke walked halfway back to the camp with Josh, then turned back and settled next to Clark. Josh went straight to his cabin and changed into his running shorts and shoes. He pulled on a t-shirt and hooded sweatshirt and headed off. He ran five hard miles along the same overgrown road that he and Clark had been clearing that morning. He ran with his arms low, letting the branches slap at his face, moving deeper into the overgrown forest without slackening his pace.

  He came to the hill that he had been running the day he met The Gimp. It had been over a year since he’d tested the torturous incline. Today he took off the sweatshirt and ran it six times, until his legs seized on him. He limped down the hill, slipped into the sweatshirt and headed straight to the hot springs.

  He approached cautiously, tilting his head as he stopped moving, listening. But there was no sound to the waning afternoon, the air dead and heavy. He tested the two pools and selected the smaller, hotter one. He used his heels to pull off his shoes and socks, then dangled his legs into the water. Occasionally he pulled one of the legs out and massaged his calf, then his thigh; then he lowered the leg back into the water.

  Standing, he stripped off his sweatshirt and t-shirt. He locked his hands behind his back and stretched, leaning over until his nose was inches from the water. He rotated his neck and craned his chin, then let it rest against his chest. Done with his warm-down, he took off his running shorts and lowered himself into the water.

  “Is it safe to look yet?” The voice came from the trees behind him.

  His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t look around. “How long have you been there?”

  “Relax, Josh. You had your back to me.”

  He kept staring into the trees. “Let me guess. You want to talk.”

  “Not really. I was here first. I just wanted to soak the last twenty-four hours off, same as you.” She walked around the edge of the pool and into his line of sight. She was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt with matching pants. Her hair was wet, her face still glowing. “But as long as we’re both here, we might as well get it over with.”

  His eyes locked on hers. “Fine. Let’s chat. Let’s be pals. What would you like to talk about?”

  “What do you think? Look, Josh, I’m sorry about how I found out. But I did.” She sat down, her legs crossed. “And now I need to know how to deal with it. I didn’t get any sleep last night. Part of it was guilt about this whole thing with your brother. But part of it was that I was scared of you.” She held his eyes. Her chin tremored and her throat flexed. “Should I be scared of you, Josh?” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  His face softened and he looked off to the treeline. “I was seventeen,” he said, his voice low, uncertain. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “No, but I think I have to.”

  “Paul and I ran with a gang in Baltimore. You know what ‘protection’ is?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “That was us. They paid us to protect them from the other gangs in the area.” He hesitated. “And from us. Either way, they paid.”

  He wet his lips and his eyes drifted off into the trees. “The thing about protection is that sooner or later someone’s going to make a run at your turf, to prove they can offer better protection than you can. There was an Italian gang in the next neighborhood. The Saints. They decided to take a run at us.”

  He leaned his head back and then let the water run out of his curls. “Gangs run in packs, like wolves. And like wolves, they mark their territory. The Saints’ sign was a cross. Original, huh? And it started showing up in our neighborhood, first on graffiti, but finally in a shop window.” He looked at her. “One of our shops.”

  “Which meant you had to fight.”

  He nodded. “It was our neighborhood. We had to fight. Either that or move. So we agreed on that Sunday night, Sunday being the lightest police shift.” He let his elbows float on the water, stirring it slightly with his fingertips.

  “One other item of interest. That cross…they didn’t just use it to mark walls and shop windows, they’d carve it into the cheeks of their victims. Not all the time but on occasion. To make a statement. And the one who did the carving, with a straight razor no less, was this tough little thing named Angela Rinaldi.”

  “Nice.”

  “The Saints had gotten into it with a Puerto Rican gang and Angela had been in the thick of it. This was a particular
ly violent fight, so when Angela got the opportunity to do her signature work, this time she didn’t go for the face. She went for the groin. So we all knew about Angela.”

  He lowered himself into the water for a moment, until the water was up to his eyes. Then he emerged. “We were in trouble from the start. These guys were tougher than us, smarter than us. We’d come with the normal weaponry—our firsts, a few clubs, a knife or two. Every one of them was armed. No guns, but everything short of it.”

  His eyes wandered off. “Whenever we were out as a group, I kept an eye on Paul. He was never much of a fighter. He was our leader due to his personality, not his fighting skills. So when we fought, I always tried to stay on his flank.”

  He breathed in and released the air slowly, grudgingly. “But this time we got separated early. I got attacked by two guys with pipes. I took one shot to my neck and another to the back of the head—or at least that’s what the bumps told me later. But I was able to get the pipe away and take those two guys out. That bought me a little bit of time, so I looked for Paul. When I finally found him, he was in trouble. He was down and the Saints’ leader was standing over him, motioning.

  “Then I saw who he was motioning to. It was Angela Rinaldi. She came out of the shadows of the alley, the razor in her hand.” He went quiet and stared into the water.

  “What happened next?”

  “She didn’t reach him,” he said into the water.

  She put her hand in the water and stirred it slightly. “What happened, Josh?”

  “I don’t remember all that much. Those pipes took a toll.” He shrugged. “The doctors—the one assigned to me for the trial—said I was suppressing. And maybe they were right. But they’d never been in a fight like this. Hell, I’d never been in a fight like this. Pipes and fists hammering on you. The knives… my shirt was in ribbons when I came to my senses at the police station, though I only got stuck one time.” He raised his arm to show a scar under his left armpit. “And while I was helping Paul up, someone got in another good shot at me with a pipe.” He shrugged. “I don’t know where getting your bell rung ends and ‘episodic suppression’ begins. And the judge didn’t care that much, either. All I know is what happened next.”

  “What did happen next?”

  “When I got to Paul, he was on the ground, cradling his face in his hands. The Saints’ leader was kicking him in the stomach, trying to get him to drop his hands so that Angela Rinaldi could wade in and do her work. I kicked the guy who was holding Paul down in the head and he went out. The leader guy caught me in the jaw with his pipe. Paul says that I dropped the pipe and wobbled, that the guy moved in, pipe raised, to finish me off. Paul was still on the ground, but he kicked out and tripped the guy up, giving me time to collect myself. According to Paul, I then kicked the guy in the balls and when his head came forward, I put him down with an elbow to the mouth.”

  “And where was Angela Rinaldi in all this?”

  “Give her credit, she didn’t turn and run. I’m bent over, trying to get my breath, and the next thing I see is this flash of razor, followed by this metallic sound. Turns out she went for Paul’s groin, he twisted at the last moment and the razor hit his belt buckle without doing any more damage.”

  He swallowed, his eyes staying off of Alexis. “Before she could use the razor again, I hit her on the side of the head and she went down. Out. And then I guess I gave her a taste of her own medicine.”

  “Guess? Aren’t you sure?”

  “There’s what you remember, and there’s what you know. Whether it was adrenaline, concussion or repression, I don’t remember everything about that evening. But I combine my memories with the police report and Paul’s recollections and I know what I did. And what I’m capable of.”

  Alexis leaned forward slightly, but said nothing.

  “When the police arrived, they lit the alley up with spotlights from different angles. They lit us up just as I put Angela Rinaldi down. And five cops saw me bend over and mark her.”

  “Do you remember what was going through your mind while you were doing it.”

  “I don’t remember cutting her at all. I do remember what she was about to do to my brother. I remember that.”

  “And what did you do with the knife when you were done?”

  His eyes welled but didn’t overflow. “She was wearing a dress—a black dress. It was like her signature—along with the razor. When she fell, the dress came up around her. And from what I gather, she wasn’t wearing any underwear.”

  “From what you gather?”

  “This is the part where I agree with the court psychologist—it’s the kind of thing you suppress. But the police report was clear. Those same five cops saw me flip the razor around and put it into her so that the blade was sticking out.”

  Neither one said a word or made a move for over a minute. “What happened next?” she said finally.

  “Everyone broke and ran. Paul and I had this rule that, whenever we were being pursued, we’d separate and meet at a pre-arranged spot. So we separated, but I was so out of it that I just wandered for about half a block until the cops gathered me up.”

  “What about Paul? What happened to him?”

  “He got away, like most of our guys. On both sides. The cops had enough to do, dealing with all the injured.”

  “What happened next?”

  “They brought me down and booked me for aggravated assault and assault with a deadly weapon. They treated me pretty well. Turned out they all knew Angela and had had to clean up after her at other fights. Some of them even congratulated me. But they still booked me.”

  He frowned. “The next day, though, all the nice cops are gone and in their place are these state investigators, shouting at me, trying to wear me down, calling me a pervert, showing me the crime scene report, including photos of Angela Rinaldi. Reading back to me what I’d admitted to as they brought me in.”

  He paused. “They let me stew with all this for the rest of the morning. After lunch they let Paul in and left us alone, and he told me what had gone down. And for the first time I believed it. And I realized what I was…what I was capable of doing to another human being.” He looked over at Alexis, his eyes lifeless. “And that’s the last time I’ll talk about it. Ever.”

  Alexis swallowed, hard. She pulled her hand from the water and stood up. She picked up her shoes, sat on a rock and stared over at him. “I know that wasn’t easy.” She opened her mouth and started to say something. Then she stopped, her mouth slightly open. She closed it and bent down and put on her shoes. “I want to be careful how I say this. What you did to that girl sickens me. But I can see it sickens you, too. You were young, you did your time, and you’ve done a lot of good since. That doesn’t excuse what you did, but I’m wondering why you need to keep punishing yourself when no one else seems to want to.”

  He kept his back to her. “I don’t punish myself. I limit myself. There’s a difference.”

  He stood up, the water sliding off his shoulders and down his chest. “We’re done here. Turn around and let me get dressed. Or go on ahead, if you’d feel more comfortable.”

  She turned her back. “I’ll wait.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Alexis stood back, hands on her hips, her face slick with sweat, and admired the freshly wallpapered wall. The smile on her face vanished as the paper at the top of the wall peeled away in slow motion and fell gently down, leaving four feet of exposed wall. Sighing, she grabbed the stepladder and walked over to the wall. Grabbing her brush, she lifted the paper, brushed on a rich dose of adhesive and re-secured the paper. She stood back again, cocking her head and staring at the wall, just as Donna walked in.

  “Tell me again why I’m doing this instead of applying a coat of cheery yellow paint,” Alexis said.

  “Because the counselor says that images like these have a positive effect on the kids, and they�
�ll be spending a lot of their day in here.”

  “Okay, then, but if there’s another room to wallpaper, give it to Carol or William. I suck at this. These people deserve better than my crappy work.”

  The members of the camp—along with a number of local women—were in the final stages of restoring a dilapidated, rambling two-story house that Donna had bought with the advance for her new book. Clark had done all the restoration blueprints, he and Josh had recruited a number of the mountain folks for the heavy work, and now they were into the finish stage. The women who were there would be the house’s first residents, with opening scheduled two weeks away. Some, afraid to go home, were sleeping in the garage until the house was finished.

  It had been over three months since Paul had left the camp. He still called up to the L every Friday, as if nothing had happened, and gave whoever answered his update on how things were going—walk-ons with a soap, a catalogue coming up, the acting class. Josh and Alexis both made sure they were not near the phone on those Fridays, but otherwise no one up at the camp commented or asked about what was up between the two brothers.

  The Gimp, however, had no such restraint. “Been a while since I saw Paul. When’s he coming back? I need my centerfielder.”

  When Josh just shrugged, The Gimp pressed on. “I hear he calls every Friday but that you don’t talk to him.” As Josh fixed his eyes on him, he held up his hands. “Hey, I’m a bartender. It’s my job to pry.”

  “It’s your job to listen to other people’s problems, not to pry.”

  “Okay, but what the hell did he do? This is your brother we’re talking about.”

  Josh kept quiet but pushed his empty mug towards The Gimp, who filled it and slid it back. “You know, Josh, sometimes you have to forgive people.”

  Josh nodded. “And sometimes you don’t.”

  The work on the shelter was a welcome change of pace for the camp that spring. Clark was sick of doing repair work around the camp and welcomed the new challenge of essentially gutting the house and building it up from the bones. Josh was happy to be his assistant, doing the heavy lifting and major repairs. William volunteered his counseling services. And Donna and Carol continued to raise both funds and awareness.