by James Smythe
‘As it seems we all do, Laurence. I suggest you take yours away from this establishment. In fact, I suggest you take yours away from Staunton. You say you want to protect your family? Why not remove yourself from the equation entirely?’ And then Trent reaches into his pocket. He doesn’t pull anything out, and there’s no click of a safety catch, but Laurence knows what he’s got in there. He’s seen him at weekends, down at the range. During hunting season he’s seen him heading out to the forests by the lake with his shotgun and his rifle and his deerstalker, the ties knotted underneath his chin as if he’s still a kid. Laurence stands up and puts the beer glass down on the counter.
‘Whatever you say,’ he says. He turns and walks out, into the cold of the air, and there are people on the streets, having just left Peaforks. He knows them all; some better than others, but they’re all at least acquaintances, all people he would have stopped and talked with before. He would have asked about their kids and told them about his. They might have asked about Sean, or asked how he was, and they would have cocked their heads when they asked, the knowing gesture of gentle unheralded sympathy; and he would have nodded that it was getting better. He misses that. He misses that connection. They look at him and they stop talking, and they start to walk off, away from him; or some of them stay standing where they are, waiting for him to leave. He knows them all, every single one of them by name. He knows where they live. His children have played with theirs; he has eaten with them, gotten drunk with them, fired off fireworks with them.
‘You have to understand,’ he says, in the street, into the air between them, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to follow it up with. They don’t have to understand anything; they don’t have to listen to him, or talk to him. They don’t have to empathize. They have seen what they needed to see.
Laurence turns and walks off, back down towards his house. He can’t go back the way he came, because there’s no way back over the wall from this side; no lawn furniture for him to stand on and climb over with. He has to take the road. He looks back and the people of Staunton are still standing there, watching him leave. He focuses again on his house, in the distance, the small stretch of clapboard houses with their front yards and expansive driveways.
‘Asshole,’ he hears, through the air. He knows the voice but can’t put a finger on it. There’s no laughter; it’s slightly pitiful, how somber the shout is. It’s almost token, made to fill the void between them. Laurence keeps going, past houses and cars, and he sees the hubbub of reporters and journalists ahead, so he crosses the road, trying to stay inconspicuous for as long as possible. He gets closer and sees them on the pavement, eating takeaway from boxes of food. Peaforks, the boxes have printed on their side, and he can see it from here: the reporters enjoying the crab he once loved, lifting the soft-shell legs to their mouths, drinking beer from cans. They have swapped shifts: a new woman is there, doing her hair, checking her face in a mirror. And there, a new man: tall, with a white shirt. Laurence can’t see his face. He puts a jacket on and it’s blue and crumpled and he talks and jokes with some of the other people sitting around. He doesn’t know if it’s the same man, but this is too coincidental. How many blue jackets can there be like that?
Laurence stays a few houses away, listening to their voices. He becomes aware of his fear; of the feeling of it inside his body. It feels as if he’s drunk: like when he was in Henderson’s; like when he was in the army; the heave of a desperation for air, or for something that he doesn’t have inside him. He feels his blood in his temples, pulsing so terribly that it almost hurts for it to be there; and he staggers into one of the hedges that marks the garden of his neighbor’s house. He coughs and sputters, and he clutches at his chest. He hears a door opening behind him, and a woman’s voice asking him if he’s all right.
‘It’s Walker,’ she says. There’s a gasp as he hits the floor, a second’s wait before they come towards him; giving him time to die, he thinks, if that’s what is happening.
‘Are you filming?’ another voice asks. He looks upwards, but all that he can see is the moon and the stars; and then light from the cameras. A flash of that blue jacket, as if he knew. He knew. Somebody asks if he’s all right and he tries to move, but he can’t get himself up any further than he already is. He wants to crawl away from them, to get back inside, but instead he rolls backwards, hitting his head on the soil next to the bush, and he says Deanna’s name, but he’s not sure that the news crews are listening to him. They ask him questions – some about how he is, but some about the video, and about his prospects, and about who he is, what measure of man – and he tries to shout his wife’s name, but if he manages it he can’t hear it over their voices, as they crowd him and don’t give him the air he desperately craves.
11
Laurence opens his eyes to stark white walls; to the table next to the bed, which has a clipboard resting across it; to the chair in the corner of the room. He sees its worn fabric arms; it’s varnished, orange wooden frame; and Sean, sitting in it. His son, propped up, asleep in the chair. Laurence leans up to speak to him. It’s been so long since he saw him, since he last held him. He thinks that this could be the answer to all of his problems; that being able to hold Sean might somehow change this all. If Sean is alive, then none of the last however-long-it’s-been is real. If Sean is alive, he can hold the family together, and his future. He reaches out to him and says his name, and Sean opens his eyes as Deanna takes Laurence’s hand, blocking his view of the chair.
‘Wait,’ Laurence says, and he moves his head. Alyx is on the chair, her hair cut short, just as her brother’s was. He mistook her, that’s all. It is such an easy mistake. He feels something slip away, then: the possibility that all of this might have been somehow imagined. The room reminds him of Sean. That’s when he was last here, at the hospital. He wonders if it could even be the same room where he held his son’s body. Fate would make that happen. Fate does everything behind his back, sneaking around, stabbing and cajoling.
‘Am I okay?’ he asks.
‘You scared us, that’s all,’ Deanna says; and he pictures the video again, the terror in their eyes. Of course I did, he thinks.
The doctor tells him to avoid anything that will cause undue stress. She buries her eyes behind her glasses, trying to not make eye contact. He asks her if he can have something to help him sleep.
‘I have trouble,’ Laurence explains. ‘I don’t know if I will be able.’
‘I can write you a script for some antihistamines,’ she says, ‘but I think we should be avoid anything stronger for now.’ He feels himself tremble; something inside him, shaking him. It feels like invisible hands. ‘Mr Walker, if you’re having trouble I would suggest therapy. There’s obviously some serious stuff happening with you right now. All I can think is that you should talk to somebody. I can recommend some names.’
‘We have someone,’ he says.
‘Then make appointments. Rest.’ She puts the clipboard in the slot at the bottom of his bed. Laurence watches her leave. In the hallway, she squeezes Deanna’s arm. She gives her a piece of paper as well, and writes something onto it. Laurence doesn’t need to ask what it is: it’ll be a private number, offering help if Deanna ever needs it. None of them know Laurence, not really, but they’re all assuming what he might be capable of. He lies in the bed and wonders if he could be.
Deanna drives them all back home, and the new car is almost unreasonably silent. Alyx plays with her toys; Lane thinks about the design on her back and the sore ache of the last addition. She’ll get it filled next week; she just needs to know how to commemorate this time in their lives. For better or worse, this is important. This is a milestone.
Deanna doesn’t slow down as she comes towards the news crews. They’ve grown in number since Laurence was rushed off to the hospital, those few stations that had held out finally getting people along to follow this new branch of the story. They don’t see it going away. Laurence hasn’t formally stepped out of the runn
ing yet and they all know there’s been no answer about the video. Either there will be answers eventually, or everything will come to a head. So they’ve massed, camping out on the side of the road. There’s a gap barely wide enough for their car to fit through in between their vans. Deanna doesn’t stop. She doesn’t beep her horn; those of them standing in their driveway are forced to dive out of the way as she pulls up and onto the ramp. They start filming them, shouting questions. Deanna leans back and looks at Alyx.
‘Hands over your ears, and don’t listen to what I’m going to say to these people,’ she says. She looks at Lane. ‘You get your sister inside, then come and help me with your father.’
‘I’m fine,’ he says, but he knows that he’s weak. If they rushed him, he’d be on the ground. He would be back where he began.
‘Let me help you,’ Deanna says, and then she opens the car door. ‘Back the fuck off,’ she yells. She swears so that they can’t use this on air. ‘Come on,’ she says to the kids. ‘Let’s go.’ They all get out of the car, Laurence trying to move as fast as he can. She helps him, supports him, and they make it to the porch. The crowd shouts at him, ignoring Deanna and the kids: asking him about his health; if he’s ever threatened his family; if he told the truth about what happened to Sean. That last one makes Laurence and Deanna stop. It’s not obvious who asked it, in the throng. The question isn’t repeated. Lane opens the door and they bundle themselves inside, straight down the hallway and into the living room. The kids stop in the doorway.
‘Mom,’ Lane says. Deanna pushes past. The living room has been ransacked. The sofas are on their backs, the fabric torn and debased and the cushions pulled apart; the drawers opened and their contents pulled out and tipped onto the floor; the kitchen cupboards hanging wide, plates and glasses smashed, and food pulled out, and there is a bag of flour smeared over the counter, red wine poured on top of it, the smashed glass of the bottle on the side of the chaos; the photo albums from the shelves pulled down and pictures taken from behind the plastic sleeves, yanked out and the plastic left ripped; the fridge door open, as if there might have been secrets inside that; the calendar screen in the fridge door smashed; the photograph of them all missing, the magnet that held it up on the ground; the drawings that had been made, Sean’s drawings that they had kept and would never ever have thrown away, torn up and screwed up or missing; the back doors swinging wide open; and in the garden, the doors to the shed thrown wide, the gardening tools and gloves and bags of seeds left strewn on the lawn; Deanna’s laptop torn into two, the screen and the keyboard next to each other, taunting each other. Deanna takes out the cellphone she has been using and dials the police, and she waits and then explains what’s been going on. The operator asks her if they’ve touched anything.
‘No,’ Deanna says.
‘Be careful to not. Maybe go and stand outside, if you can. We’ll send some officers round straight away.’ Deanna hangs up.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ she says to her family. ‘Stay here. I’ll be back.’ She runs upstairs, to see the rest of the house. They have been everywhere, whoever it was. Every part of their home defiled. The house is ruined. She sits on their bed, which has been knifed at, the duvet torn apart, the mattress dug into, feathers and foam everywhere, and she sobs. I have to have this second, she thinks. I have to give myself that. She looks over, at the wardrobe, where the doors are opened, pulled wide and her clothes, his clothes, bundled on the floor, his suits all destroyed, cut up and torn apart. She sees a Converse shoebox tucked at the back of the wardrobe on Laurence’s side. He hasn’t worn those trainers in years. She hasn’t even noticed that. Keepsakes, she reasons. She leans down and picks it up and opens it, and she finds photographs of the two of them from years ago, occasions that she barely remembers. There are pictures of his parents as well, which she has never seen; and underneath them, a stubby bolt-black pistol. She drops the box onto the shredded bedding at her feet and the weight of the gun makes it thud.
‘Are you all right?’ Lane calls up to her.
‘Stay down there,’ Deanna says. ‘I’m fine. Stay there.’ She can’t be sure, not completely positive, but she’s seen the gun before. She’s seen it in his hand in that video. She leans down and picks it up, and she holds it. She has never held one before. It’s lighter than she imagined. She thought that it would be weighed down, the power of it somehow imbuing it with heft. She holds it as if she were aiming it, pointing it at the wall. But there’s nothing to target.
There’s a knock on the door downstairs, heavy fists. She jumps, and she stands up. That will be the police. She has to put this somewhere. She opens her bedside table and moves her hairdryer and straighteners aside and slides it in underneath them, a drawer now full of ambiguous metallic black technology.
Robards and Templeton step into the room and ask the rest of them to stay behind them. They look around, peering into the cupboards. ‘We saw on the news that you passed out,’ Robards says to Laurence. ‘You went to hospital. How long was the house unattended?’
‘We were out all night,’ ‘Deanna says. ‘We all went.’ Robards nods. He mutters to Templeton, sending him out to the reporters to ask them if they saw anything.
‘Rest of the house the same, you say?’
‘Yes,’ Deanna says.
‘I mean, you know that there’s a very good chance we’ll never know who did this.’ He pokes his tongue into the space below his bottom lip, making it jut, and he shakes his head. ‘You think they were looking for anything?’
‘There’s nothing to look for.’
‘No, I guess there’s not.’
Deanna looks at Laurence, who is sitting on a seat in the corner, head bowed. ‘We didn’t want this.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’ She tries to make eye contact, but he’s focused on Laurence and he doesn’t lift his eyes away. He watches Laurence’s hands move, as he rubs them on his thighs. His palms are sweaty and they leave dark tracks on the gray fabric. Robards walks closer to him, and he glances at the rest of the room as if he’s looking for something, but really – and it’s obvious, because he’s young and relatively new at this and not really at all subtle – he wants to get closer to Laurence. He wants to examine him.
‘Listen,’ Robards says, ‘there are lots of folk in town who have questions.’ Laurence looks up. ‘You understand why, of course. People who trusted you, Mr Walker.’
‘I haven’t done anything,’ Laurence says.
‘I know, I know.’ He smiles. ‘Just want to make sure you’re all feeling all right, that’s all. You know how it is.’ Templeton comes back and stands in the doorway, leaning back, his arms folded, hands tucked into his armpits.
‘Nobody saw nothing,’ he says.
‘Which means, chances are they came in through the back. Somebody must’ve known to do that. You got any access at the back of the house?’
‘There’s a wall to the fields and the woods,’ Deanna says, ‘but there’s no way over it.’
‘That right?’ He walks to the garden and out, and he keeps walking down towards the wall. Deanna follows, and Templeton. She sees the table up against the wall. ‘Well, this is likely how they got over when they left,’ he says. He stands on it and then on his tiptoes, and he peers over. ‘Must make jumping the wall easy, having this here. Nothing the other side, mind you. Likely more than one of them, helped each other over.’ He walks back to the house and raises his voice in order to talk to Laurence. ‘You shouldn’t leave anything like this lying around. Could have trapped them here, or forced them out the front.’
Laurence stands up. ‘The man in the jacket,’ he says. He comes through to the garden, swift sharp movements that belie his previous state. ‘There was a man outside, in a blue jacket. I’ve seen him before; at the airport, back when … before. And then again, when I was at the mall. He was here.’
‘The blue jacket man again?’ Robards and Templeton look at each other and smile, a shared, somehow weary joke.
‘Yes. We gave you the thread, when you came before. That was him; he was back here.’ Robards and Templeton look at each other.
‘We’ll ask outside if they know who you’re talking about,’ Robards says.
‘They were with him,’ Laurence says. ‘He must have been watching me.’
‘You sound awful paranoid,’ Robards says.
‘No, look outside. Against the wall. I put the table there, against the wall. I used it. He must have known that.’
‘You put that there? You should be more careful,’ Robards says. His response is calm but antagonistic; there’s something there, Deanna thinks. Some insinuation. Laurence sees it as well.
‘Was it you? Were you here?’ he asks
‘Don’t make accusations, now, Mr Walker. We have better things to do than come and raid your house.’ He gets closer to Laurence. Deanna can see this unraveling, suddenly. It turns from something natural to something dangerous. ‘We’re simply trying to keep the people of Staunton safe.’
‘So why aren’t you taking this more seriously? There was somebody here—’
‘We’re dealing with your situation in the manner that—’
‘You’re ignoring the fact that we are being hounded! There have been other people here, people going through our trash. I have been followed. I have been followed, and my family has been followed, and we’ve had an intruder in our house. Our goddamned house!’ He raises his voice to a shout. Deanna puts her hand on his arm, to calm him, but he snaps it off; another jerk of his limbs. He gasps in air and his voice roars. ‘We are being threatened. My family is being threatened. Can’t you see that?’
‘The only person we’ve seen threatening your family is you, Mr Laurence.’ Robards steps closer, to within contact distance. ‘Or have you not been watching the news?’ Laurence steps forward, eye-to-eye.
‘Don’t,’ Deanna says, but she doesn’t touch him again. She’s not seen him like this before.