The Keeper

by Barr, Clifford

  He walked into the store, noticed how much more expensive whiskey had gotten over the years, and bought some. He put the bottles in the backseat next to the urn.

  He knew where to put the urn, but not the bottles. They felt right to have a failsafe in case his weakness ever rose to the surface and took control, the way it had when his hair was darker and his ambitions wider.

  He didn’t drink it yet, but as his thoughts swirled and melted together amidst that AA meeting, he thought very much of going home and giving it a try. Maybe he wouldn’t be addicted to it anymore? Maybe now, with Beth dead, and the kids dead as well, he would be able to stop himself, drinking to maintain their honor and memory and some shit like that. He wouldn’t be doing it for fun, God no. He would be having a nice social drink by himself like many others had done so over the years. He wouldn’t lose control.

  Hell, that was the old him. This new Walter, the one who had been going to AA for all these years, who had been helping others get over their drinking, he would have control, and he would know when to stop. It wasn’t fair that a bunch of small mistakes and one big mistake could dictate his entire life.

  “Hey.”

  Walter looked up.

  Frank was looking down at him. It was a look he had seen from almost everyone else that day, and the weeks before, all the same look, on different faces. The worry, God, the worry, it was enough to make Walter want to puke.

  “Hey,” Walter said back, matching his friend’s stare.

  “Come on, Walt,” Frank said, sitting down. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Then don’t look at me like that,” Walter said.

  “Like what?” Frank said.

  “Like how everyone else has been looking at me over the last couple of weeks.”

  Walter made sure to whisper and keep his voice down. People were expecting him to explode, and as much as he would have loved to give them a show, he still wanted them to lose interest in him. They could all go back to their lives and stop worrying about now alone Walt with a history of drinking, thank you.

  “We’re concerned for you,” Frank said.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Walter said.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” Frank said. “It’s not like that.”

  “You think I’m gonna drink again,” Walter said.

  “Do you want to?” Frank said.

  “We all do,” Walter made a sweeping motion with his hand. “That’s why we meet here twice a week, so we don’t ever do what we want.”

  “Yeah, well, when things happen—”

  “My wife is dead,” Walter said. “You don’t need to cut around the comers. I can tell you she won’t mind.”

  “Well, she would mind your drinking,” Frank said.

  Walter tried to speak, but Frank put his hand up.

  “I’m saying that we’re all here for you,” Frank said. “And if you want to talk . . . or not talk, then that’s fine.”

  “I am fine.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Frank said. “Hell, if you’re fine, then I’m sure that any of the guys and gals in here would trade an arm and a leg to be fine. How is it that you managed to be fine, Walter? We would like to know.”

  Walter rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut.

  Frank seemed to get the message.

  “Look,” he said. “I came over here to ask if you wanted to come with a couple of my friends over to Scotia. My pal Benny’s got a boat, and he wants to put it on the Mohawk. Plans on drifting around for a bit, maybe stop by a friend’s house in Vischer Ferry and then come back. You thinking about coming along?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To get out of your house Walt,” Frank said. “Unless you want to tell me that you enjoy being alone there.”

  Even though no one in the meeting was looking at him but Frank, he could feel all of their eyes on him, or rather, their attention focused on his body language, what he was going to say, the tone of his voice, and so on. They were all watching him, but they at least had the politeness not to make it public. They still weren’t polite enough to leave him damn well alone like he wanted, but he had to give them some credit for covering it up.

  Frank leaned back in the chair.

  “You’re not a bad guy, Walt,” Frank said.

  “You know what I did,” Walter said.

  “I know you didn’t plan for it to happen,” Frank said. “Sure, you might have been drunk out of your mind when it happened, but you didn’t have much of a say in the actual events. Jack and Annabelle could still have flown into that truck regardless if you had been sober or not. But right now, Walt, right now, you do have a choice.”

  The meeting was starting to convene.

  “You have a second chance here, Walt,” Frank said. “You aren’t a bad guy, I know, but when bad things happen to people, it makes ’em desperate. And there’s nothing more dangerous than an upset, desperate man. You and I both know the danger such an occurrence has, not only on the person, but the people around them as well. Think about my offer; we can talk after the meeting.”

  The meeting was small and uneventful.

  What did all these people know, with their small problems? Hell, the closest thing to how Walter felt and viewed himself was Bob, of all people, who at this time was still very much able to walk and talk and beat his wife. Bob wasn’t a good person, and neither was Walter. He was tired of their purity, tired of it all.

  You’re not a bad person, Frank had said, but what did Frank know? None of them had seen what he saw, heard the sound of his son’s skull bursting open like a frozen watermelon or the sound his daughter had made as the glass pierced her face. None of them knew what it was like to go home after that, to open the door and tell Beth that he had done it, he had turned away for one moment, and at that moment their lives had more or less ended. He thought about killing himself, jumping off the Hudson Bridge, or one of the other ones—as long as the drop was long and the water was frozen solid, it would work for him. He was flexible that way.

  Sure, some of these people here at the meeting had problems with their children, but at least they had children, they had someone to look back on someone to redeem themselves.

  Walter didn’t have anything, and with his wife nothing more than ashes, he didn’t have much left anyway.

  He didn’t go with Frank that weekend to Scotia, nor did he go with Frank on any other occasion.

  You’re not a bad guy, Walter, You’re desperate.

  You can be both, he thought, turning toward Rebecca.

  “It’s not your fault,” Walter said. “None of this is your fault.”

  “It’s my father’s,” Rebecca said.

  “Yes, but don’t be so quick to judge,” Walter said. “Your father did what he did out of love.”

  “A lot of people have been killed by love,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh, spare me the teenage melodrama, okay?” Walter said. “You’re obviously a lot older than your years, so act like an adult. Your father didn’t know what he was doing when he did what he did, but don’t be so eager to cut him out of your life. Plenty of fathers have made mistakes over the years, and if his worst sin was that he wanted to keep his wife from dying and protect his family, then he seems all right in my book.”

  “Must be a pretty slim book,” Rebecca said.

  “No,” Walter said. “But it’s old, like me.”

  Neither one of them spoke for a while after that. So many things had come about that Walter also didn’t know where to begin. Or rather, he did. He didn’t want to have to do it. They still hadn’t crossed the point of no return, and while this in between was nice, it was deteriorating quickly. They could camp out here until morning, or until the storm broke, as long as the shield held. He had already tried to call the police but to no avail. There would be no help coming, not for them. A couple of snowplows had driven by, but he didn’t figure they would make heads or tails of the situation. A plow driver’s first concern was the road
immediately ahead of them, and not what freaky light shows might be happening on the sides of the road. A plow driver that paid too much attention to the oddities of the roads, rather than the roads themselves is likely to run over a mailbox or two, or run straight into the metal guards that hang over each edge of the highways, meant to keep cars from driving over into the steep hills below.

  No, the boys and girls in the trucks were good, which meant they wouldn’t pay old Walt any attention, not when the snow was failing this thick and deep.

  Walter stood up.

  His vision blurred slightly, followed by an onset of darkness, known as a head rush. He wished he had more coffee, but the cold small last drops were all that was left in his Stewarts cup. Rodney used to have a coffee maker in this stop, but like most things Rodney tried to do, it broke within a few weeks and hadn’t been used since. A spider web was constructed inside the pot as the small creatures waited out the cold like everyone else.

  By this point, he had planned on being home, either reading quietly or watching TV. It didn’t matter which, since both hurt his eyes and allowed him to forget about the quietness of the house for a while.

  He hadn’t planned on getting involved in all of this, but he was here to stay. He looked down at Rebecca.

  “Something tells me I might be the least interesting person at this rest stop,” he said, walking over to his desk.

  “It’s not bad to be uninteresting,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m plenty interesting,” he said, reaching into his desk. “I just don’t have lights running through my veins like you and your friends.”

  “They aren’t my friends.”

  “Course they are.”

  “They want to kill me.”

  “Oh no, Rebecca,” Walter said. “They don’t want to kill you. They think that they have to survive. I have seen bad people over the years, and your friends out there with the little light show that are glowing under their skins, they aren’t bad. And that’s what makes them dangerous.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing,” Walter said. “I doubt I’ll be able to convince you to sacrifice yourself for them, and I doubt I’d be able to convince them to spare your life. So for now, we do nothing. We could try and make it to the car, but the tall girl, pregnant or not, would shut us down, and that’s assuming your buddy who’s shoving her head into the field didn’t get to us first, or that your brother with his feeling, or whatever you called it, would be the one to grab us.

  “So, no, Becca, this doesn’t look like something we can fight our way out of. Even if I was able to get the shotgun out of my car, I seriously doubt any of your friends would give me the time to shoot it.”

  “They aren’t going to like your answer.”

  “They already know my answer,” Walter said. “That’s why they haven’t destroyed my truck, that’s why they haven’t taken any one of the nearby plow drivers hostage. They know that you’re not going to die, and truly, at the end of the day, none of these people here want to kill you. You were their friend only a few days ago, and while rage is a good motivator, it is bad at providing a sustaining foundation. I’ve seen many people over the years, angry about this or that. The second they act out on that anger, they make their lives inexorably worse. And they knew that that would happen. They know that they’ll make it worse, and yet they do it anyway.

  “I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. I only warn you that your friends out there don’t want to hurt you.”

  And Walter hoped that was true. He had known hundreds of people over the years through AA, and even more through all of the books he read. He felt like he could read those kids out there, and at the end of the day, that’s all they were, a bunch of scared kids who didn’t want to die, like almost everyone else. He could almost pity them, and Becca had been right. Had he not heard their stories, then perhaps he too could find a way to hate them.

  But now he couldn’t, and there was a cost for that.

  He walked over and grabbed his jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not I,” Walter said, “We.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We deserve to let them know what’s going to happen.”

  “I thought you said that they already knew.”

  “They do, trust me. But we can at least give them some peace of mind.”

  Walter headed toward the door but stopped at the opening. His hand felt cold on the doorknob, colder than he would have liked. There wasn’t any easy way out of this situation, or if there was, it was hidden too well for him to get a grip on either side. More people would die, and it wasn’t his job to say which. He couldn’t get Becca to do anything that she didn’t want to—

  “You wanted me to convince you,” he said, turning slightly.

  Rebecca didn’t say anything. That was why she hadn’t left, why she hadn’t killed him, or tried other ways to get out of this situation. She wanted someone there to bear witness.

  “Are you satisfied?” Walter said.

  “You’re a good man, Walter,” Rebecca said. “And I’m sorry that you were brought into all of this. Like I said, ignorance sometimes is better than the alternative. How will you go about your days, knowing full well that people are going to die tonight, either me or them, and we both know it is going to be them? You might have been able to convince me, but you didn’t. And now four bodies are going to be waiting on your doorstep.”

  “There were always going to be four bodies,” Walter said. “The conflict was whether or not you’d be one of the four or the one burying them.”

  “And now we know the answer,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go give them the news.”

  She strolled past him and opened the door.

  Old air came in, but no snow. The field had successfully managed to keep all the new snow and high winds from coming in.

  There were three out there waiting for them that Walter could see. Danni was still shoving her head into the force field, waiting a second for it to regrow, and then hitting her head again. Jolie was standing over by Kent, talking, their bodies sending off lights of green and pink.

  Matt wasn’t there, but Walter saw an orange glow in the distance, heading for them.

  The time of talking was over.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Becca has every reason to hate me. I’ve tried hating myself lately, and it never seems to work. Every time I open my eyes, I’m still trapped in this new life. I traded one hell for another, and I brought others in with me.

  -Robbie’s Journal

  Walter walked down the path toward the kids. They were kids all right, a bunch of scared kids. He wanted to tell them that it would be all right, that there wasn’t any reason to fear. But that would have been all lies, the kind that burns your throat and your conscience. He couldn’t do anything really, and even if he could, who’s to say that he would?

  The sky was dark above them, the only light seeming to come from the force field around them, giving everything a soft purple hue.

  Matt was coming out of the trees, his face hard and set. Jolie looked worried.

  Kent looked at them as they approached.

  To their left, Danni was still hitting her face into the field.

  Walter wondered what it must be like inside that girl’s head, but figured it is best if he didn’t know. The mind of a feral animal was a nice thing to look at, but to experience it might be close to maddening.

  The world seemed small and inconsequential around all of them. Through the field, Walter could feel their desperation, but something else as well. Was it fear? Of all the people Walter had talked to over the years at AA meetings, he knew a thing or two about desperation, and these kids reeked with it.

  And here he was to tell them that there would be no hope.

  At least this time, Rebecca would be with them.

  Whether or not that was better for the other people was inconsequential.

  He stopped a
foot or so from the field. Matt moved forward to reach him.

  “You’ve both made your decision,” he said.

  “Yes,” Becca said.

  “You already know what it is, Matt,” Walter said.

  “Yes,” Matt said.

  Kent laughed.

  “And yet we’re still here,” the man without arms or legs said. “How poetic.”

  “I never wanted any of this to happen to you,” Rebecca said.

  “Your father probably felt the same,” Kent said. “And yet here we all are anyway. It looks like his intention in this matter was irrelevant.”

  “He knew we would follow,” Jolie said. “What else could we do? I’m sorry for killing your mother, Rebecca. I didn’t want Matt to have to do it.”

  “You didn’t have to kill her at all,” Walter said.

  “And then what?” Matt said, “Sit back and allow the only chance any of us had at having a normal life drive away? They left us, abandoned us. It’s only right that they should be confronted about it.”

  “And yes, that’s happened now,” Walter said. “So why don’t we all calm down and try to enjoy these last couple of moments you have with one another. Matt, this is your sister, someone you’ve known for all of their life. Are you really willing to waste your time trying to kill her?”

  “Do you think I want to?” Matt said. The surface of the force field in front of him rippled but held strong.

  “Do you think anyone of us wants to be out here right now?” Matt said.

  “I know you don’t,” Walter said. “But you’re the one who decided to follow them. You’re the one who decided to try and kill your sister. Part of the blame for all this falls on your shoulders, and you know it. All of you know it. I might not know a lot about all of you, but I know where your headspace is right now, and it’s not good. Best to pull yourselves out of this river, lest you be taken up by the tide and ripped away.”

  “It’s so simple for you to say that, isn’t it?” Kent said. “You, the one who isn’t dying. The one who can still stand and use your arms. It must be so hard for you to tell us of your sacrifices.”

  “Regardless,” Rebecca said. “We don’t need to fight anymore. We can all try and go up to the lab in Toronto.”