“Freedom,” she said. “Is it the worst thing to take? Worse than anything. Maybe it is.”
He climbed down the ladder.
“You have a scar on your arm.”
He looked down at his forearm, the scar ran the length, not angry, just there.
“And you have scars all over your body. Did you get beaten in there?”
“You look like your mother.”
“Don’t let that fool you.”
She scooted back a little, fussed with the small bow in her hair as he watched. “Subterfuge. People see a girl and nothing else.”
She rolled the bicycle back and forth.
He found a screwdriver and walked over slowly. “The brake is sticking, that’s why it’s hard to pedal.”
She watched him carefully.
He knelt by her leg, careful not to touch her skin, and fiddled with the brake then stood and moved back.
She rocked again, felt the wheel move easy, turned as the moon fell, starred sky behind him and the old home.
“Don’t come by our house again. We don’t need anyone.”
“Alright.”
“I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
“I don’t want that either.”
“That boy that broke your window, his name is Nate Dorman.”
“Good to know.”
She turned and slowly rode back, away from him, toward home.
When she reached her street she saw the car, the hood so long it jutted from their driveway. Darke was back again.
She pedaled hard and dropped her bike to the grass, frantic, she should not have gone. She moved down the side of the house and then into the door by the kitchen, quiet, sweat rolling down her spine. She took the phone from the cradle on the wall. And then she heard it, laughing, her mother’s laugh.
She watched from shadows they could not see. A bottle on the coffee table, half gone, a cluster of red flowers, the kind they sold at the gas station on Pensacola.
She left them and stepped out into the yard, climbed back through the window and checked their bedroom door was still locked. She peeled off her shorts, kissed Robin’s head, then opened the drapes and lay at the foot of his bed. She would not sleep till the giant man was gone.
7
“TELL ME ABOUT THE GIRL,” Vincent said.
They sat at the back of the old church. Through the window was the cemetery and beyond that the ocean, each given stained colors. They’d stopped by Sissy’s grave, Walk leaving his friend alone for a while. Vincent had brought flowers, dropped to his knees and read the stone. He stayed there an hour, till Walk came and gently rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Duchess, she’s older than she should be, you know.” Walk guessed he knew better than most.
“And Robin?”
“She looks out for him. Duchess does what her mother should.”
“The father?”
Walk looked at the old benches, painted white, droplets had made it to the stone floor. The roof was high and arched and intricately knotted, the kind of beautiful that impelled vacationers to take photographs and pack the place out every Sunday.
“Nothing in it, both times. She was seeing a couple guys back then, she was out a lot, I’d see her come back in the morning.”
“Walk of shame.”
“There wasn’t shame in it. You ever know Star to care?”
“I’m not sure I know Star at all.”
“You do. She’s the same girl you took to junior prom.”
“I wrote Hal. Her father.”
“Did he write back?”
“He did.”
Ten minutes passed, Walk wondering but not wanting to know. Star’s father was hard. He had acres in Montana, the Cape too painful even to visit. He had not met his grandchildren.
“At first he told me to kill myself.”
Walk looked at the sainted wall, the depictions of judgment, and forgiveness.
“I might’ve done it. Then he changed his mind. Death was too good. He sent me a photo of her.” Vincent swallowed. “Sissy.”
Walk closed his eyes as the sun cut through and found the pulpit.
“You been into town yet?”
“I don’t know this place anymore.”
“You will know it again.”
“I had to go into Jennings to pick up some paint. I saw Ernie owns the place now.”
“Did he give you a hard time? I can talk to him.” Ernie had been one of the walkers that night. He’d been the first to see Walk raise his hand, the first to run back over then stop dead at the scene, double over and retch at the sight of the little girl.
They stood together and walked out, through the green grass and over the leaning gravestones. At the cliff edge they watched water break over jagged rock two hundred feet below.
Walk felt dizzy at the sight. “I think about it often. How we were. I see the Cape Haven kids, like Duchess, and I think of me and you and Star and Martha. Star said to me some days she still feels fifteen. We can get together, the three of us. In time, we can get things back. It was simpler, right. It was—”
“Listen, Walk. What you think you know, or might know, about what happened over the years. Whatever I was, I’m not now.”
“How come you didn’t let me visit, after your mother?”
Vincent kept his eyes on the scene, like he hadn’t heard. “He wrote me, Hal. Every year. On Sissy’s birthday.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“Sometimes it was short, to remind me, like I needed it. Other times he went on for ten pages. It wasn’t all anger, some was on change, what I could do, how I could let others live their lives and not pull them down.”
Walk got it then, it was not self-preservation of any kind, the way he’d reasoned it.
“If you can’t right a wrong, if you can’t ever do that …”
Together they watched a trawler, The Sun Drift, Walk knew it, blue paint and rust, curved lines of steel and wire. It moved silent from where they were, no waves just the carve of its hull.
“Some things just are, right. There’s a reason, always, but talk won’t change any of it.”
There was much Walk wanted to ask about the last thirty years of his friend’s life, but the scars on Vincent’s wrists told him it might well be worse than he could ever have imagined.
They walked back toward town in silence, Vincent keeping to the side streets, head down, always. “Star,” he said. “She saw a lot of guys then?”
Walk shrugged, and, for a moment, thought he had heard the slightest note of jealousy in Vincent’s voice.
He watched his friend walk away, back toward Sunset, to patch up the old, empty house.
After lunch Walk made the drive to Vancour Hill Hospital.
He rode the elevator to the fourth floor, took his place in the waiting room and read a glossy, pages of stark homes as minimalist as their keepers, reflected light all sanitary stucco. He kept his head low, though the other person was a young woman as determined as him, there in betraying body, mind displaced.
His name called, he moved fast, no outward sign, no matter the aches and pains, only a few hours earlier he could barely stand.
“The pills aren’t working,” he said, as he sat. The office was uniform, the only personal touch a framed photo that faced away. The doctor was Kendrick.
“Your hand again?” Kendrick said.
“Everything. A half hour to get up each day.”
“But you haven’t slowed down, in other ways? Walking? Smiling?”
He smiled despite himself. She returned it.
“Just the hands, the arms. Stiffness. Nothing more, I know it’ll come.”
“And you haven’t told anyone. Still?”
“They chalk me as a boozehound.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“My line of work, it’s a good fit, right?”
“You know you’ll have to tell someone.”
“And then what? I won’t sit behind a desk
.”
“You could try something else.”
“I tell you, you ever see me wasting my days on some fishing boat, you just come down and shoot me. Being a policeman is … I like my place. I like my life. I want to keep both.”
Kendrick smiled a sad smile. “Anything else?”
He stared out, the window more than a view then, a way to leave himself while he detailed what needed saying. A little trouble pissing, a little trouble shitting. And more than a little trouble sleeping. Kendrick said it was normal, made suggestions, lose a little weight, diet, therapy, changing dose, Levodopa. Nothing he did not know. He was not someone that walked blindly into medicating. He spent his free time in the library, reading up, six stages, Braak’s Hypothesis, even back to James Parkinson.
“Fuck,” he said, then raised a hand. “I’m sorry for cursing. I don’t do that.”
“Fuck,” Kendrick agreed.
“I can’t lose my job. I just can’t. The people need me.” He wondered if that were true. “It’s only the right side,” he lied.
“There’s a group.”
He made to stand.
“Please,” she said, and he took the pamphlet.
* * *
Duchess sat on the sand. She hugged her knees as she watched Robin, ankle deep and hunting shells. He had a collection, mostly fragments, his pockets fit to burst.
Off left was a group of kids from her school, the girls in bathing suits and the boys tossing a ball. The noise floated on, right through her. She had that ability, to feel totally alone on a beach full of people, in a class full of kids. She got that from her mother, but she fought it with everything she had. Robin needed stability, not a pissy teenage sister who bitched her way through her shitty life.
“Another,” Robin called.
She stood and walked over, the water cold for a moment, lines of rugged coast stretched far in either direction. She fixed Robin’s sun hat and felt his forearms, warm, they could not afford lotion. “Don’t burn.”
“I know.”
She helped him search, fished a perfect sand dollar from the clearest of water and watched him smile.
Robin saw Ricky Tallow and ran at him, the two greeting each other with hugs that made her smile.
“Hi, Duchess.” Leah Tallow. She was plain, the kind of even features that Duchess sometimes wished her own mother had. Just a mom, not a singer in a bar with her ass and tits out, not the kind of woman men stared at when they walked along the beach.
“We have to go soon.” Robin’s face fell but he didn’t say anything.
“We can run him back if you want to get on. Where is it you live?”
“Ivy Ranch Road.” Ricky’s father, head of grey hair long before he should’ve, the kind of bags beneath his eyes that seemed to get heavier every time Duchess saw the man.
Leah shot her husband a look.
He looked away, emptied out a bag full of beach toys and Robin eyed them, keeping his mouth straight. He wouldn’t ask her, she hated that, loved him for it but still hated that.
She weighed it a while. “You sure?”
“Of course. Ricky’s brother is joining us later. He can show the boys how to toss a ball.”
Robin looked up at Duchess, wide eyes.
“We’ll drop him back before dinner.”
Duchess took Robin aside, knelt in the sand and cupped his face tight. “You know to be good.”
“Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder, where Ricky was beginning to dig out a channel. “Yes, I’ll be good. I swear.”
“Don’t leave them, don’t run off, be polite. Don’t say nothing about Mom.”
Robin nodded, his most serious face, and then she kissed his head, waved to Leah Tallow and crossed the hot sand to grab her bicycle.
She was sweating by the time she reached Sunset Road, got off and pushed the last fifty. Outside the King house she stopped.
On the porch Vincent sanded, his back bent as sweat dripped from his chin. She watched a while. He had muscles, low and tight on his arms, not the bulging kind she saw on the beach. She crossed the street and stood at the end of his driveway.
“You want to help?” Vincent had stopped, sitting now, a block and sandpaper in hand, he offered out another.
“Why the fuck would I want to do that?”
He went back to work. She propped her bike against the fence and moved nearer.
“You want a drink or something?”
“You’re a stranger.”
She noticed he had a tattoo that showed when he stretched, peeking from beneath the arm of his T-shirt. He worked on for another ten minutes.
She moved nearer still.
He stopped, sat again. “That man … the other night, you know him?”
“He looks at me like he knows me.”
“Does he stop by often?”
“More and more lately.” She wiped sweat from her head with the back of her arm.
“You want me to tell Walk?”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“You got anyone else you can call?”
“I’m an outlaw, it says so in the records.”
“You want to call me, if it happens again?”
“Dallas Stoudenmire killed three men in five seconds. I think I can handle one.” She shifted her weight and leaned on one hip, then moved nearer and sat on the bottom step, five down from him.
He turned and bent and began to sand again, sweeping his hand, even, firm. She reached out, took the other block and got to work on her step.
“How come you don’t sell this shitty house?”
He knelt like he was praying before the old place.
“People say … I mean, I heard them in Rosie’s and they were saying you could get a million bucks or something crazy. And you want to stay here.”
He looked behind at the house, for so long it was like he could see something she could not. “My great-grandfather built this house. This town, Cape Haven, when Walk drove me in I was glad I still knew parts of it. It’s not just the vacationers that changed, it’s …” He paused like he did not know what to say. “I didn’t think I was all bad, back then. When I see it, when I look back that far I see someone that wasn’t all bad.”
“And now?”
“Prison has a way of turning the light out. And this house it’s … a small flame maybe, but it’s still burning. If I let it go, if I let that last light go, then it’s all dark, and I won’t be able to see it anymore.”
“See what?”
“You ever think people look at you but don’t really see you?”
She let that sit. Fussed with her bow, tucked her lace into her sneaker. “What happened to Sissy?”
He stopped again, this time sat back, one arm in the sun, eyes squint to her. “Your mother didn’t tell you?”
“I want you to tell me.”
“I took my brother’s car out.”
“Where was he?”
“He went to war. You know about Vietnam?”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to impress a girl so I took her out in the car.”
She knew who the girl was.
“After I dropped her home I drove Cabrillo—you know the bend by the town sign?”
“Yes.”
He spoke quiet. “I didn’t know I’d hit her. I didn’t even slow.”
“Why was she out?”
“She was looking for her sister. Your grandfather, he worked nights sometimes, that factory, Tallow Construction. That still there?”
She shrugged. “Just about.”
“So he slept the days off. Star was in charge of her.”
“But Star wasn’t there.”
“I called her. We had a couple beers. Us, and Walk and Martha May. You know her?”
“No.”
“I lost track of time. She’d left Sissy in front of the television set.” His voice had no depth. The rote recital that made her wonder what was left of him.
“How did they find you?”
“I think Walk was a cop even back then. He came to my place that same night. Saw the car, the damage.”
They worked on in silence. She grit her teeth and smoothed the wood, so hard her shoulder pained.
“You need to look out for yourself,” he said. “I know that kind. Darke. I saw men like that, something in the eyes, not right.”
“I’m not scared. I’m tough.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“You have a brother to look out for. It’s a lot of responsibility.”
“I lock our bedroom door so he doesn’t see nothing. And anything he hears he chalks to bad dreams.”
“You lock him inside, is that safe?”
“Safer than what’s outside.”
She watched him then, his mind far, like he was weighing something heavy.
A while before he finally met her eye. “You’re an outlaw?”
“I am.”
“Then give me a minute. I’ve got something for you.”
She watched him go, into the house, and she wondered about absolution. She knew reprieve was a temporary notion, so fleeting when she saw him return it was like watching a dead man walking.
8
“SOMETIMES I THINK SHE HATES me.”
Walk glanced at Star but she did not look back. There was a calm to her that morning, he knew it would not last.
“She’s a teenager.”
“You really believe that’s all it is, Walk? I don’t need bullshit, not from you.”
As they passed Brandon Rock’s place Walk saw the drapes move, and then Brandon was out. He fought the limp, mouth tight as he crossed the yard. Walk stalled a little and Star sighed.
“Morning.” Brandon smiled at Star.
“You woke half the street again, Brandon. You best fix that engine or Duchess will come out and do it for you.”
“That’s a 1967—”
“I know what car it is.Your father’s car, same car you’ve been working on for the past twenty years. I even saw you talking about the fucking thing in the local newspaper.”
The spread had been crude, a local lives spot buried near the classifieds. Brandon talked pistons for half a page then lay across the hood, hair feathered, pouting lips. Duchess had defaced their copy with a marker then taped it to Brandon’s front gate.
We Begin at the End Page 6