by Brian Hodge
Then she looked at me, her forehead creasing and the smile leaving her eyes. And that look cut me straight to the heart. Because, whether or not she realized it, she was accusing me of bringing the ills of an outside world past her front door, into her home. And I guess she had every right to feel that way, because it was true.
“I suppose you’ll want to talk to Chris now,” she said, then clicked on the console TV and settled into a plump armchair.
“I’ll help you with some of that,” I said, grabbing the suitcase and hefting it from the floor.
He frowned at the bandage on my throat. “What happened to you? Cut yourself shaving?”
“Yeah.” I followed Phil down a narrow hallway lined with pictures from the family’s past. His parents early in their marriage, Phil and his older sister as babies, then toddlers. Since she had five years on him, they were never at the same stage at the same time.
Phil had been a pudgy little guy with very short hair.
He led me into his room, a small cubicle that couldn’t possibly have held much more after we were in. I set the suitcase next to the bed and shut the door. Phil cocked his head curiously.
“How were the last couple days up at school?” I asked.
“Worked hard, played hard,” he said, shucking his coat and beginning to hang up the fistful of clothes he’d brought along. “Ashley played bartender this afternoon, after my two o’clock class. We had a dozen people in our room. I called up to see if you wanted to come down for a drink, and that’s when Greg told me about Aaron. So what happened with him?”
I took a deep breath. None of this was going to come easily. “Aaron got to suspecting something, and it really scared him. He just took off to do some thinking.”
“What do you mean, suspecting?” Phil hung the last of his clothes, then turned toward me with all the speed of a turtle in winter. “You don’t mean something that has to do with Bobby Dennison, and—”
I nodded and sat in Phil’s desk chair.
“Oh shit,” Phil said, raising a hand to his mouth. He eased onto his bed. “What’s going on, Chris?”
“Aaron got to thinking it was Hurdles that did it.”
Phil’s eyes were rapt upon me. “Was he right?”
“Yeah.” I paused to lay a finger on my bandage. “This? I almost got my head nailed to the floor this morning. I was taking Aaron to school, and … and Hurdles showed up with a crossbow.” My eyes dropped to the floor; watching Phil’s face register impact after heavyweight impact was more than I could stand. “He went on a rampage, and … he didn’t make it.”
Phil made an airy sound in his throat. “Was anybody else hurt?”
“Mr. Springer got hit in the leg.” I stopped, grappling for some easy to put this, but there was none. “And Mr. Goddard is in the hospital in critical condition.”
Phil slowly lowered his head, brought his hands up to his face. He stood, pacing an erratic path across the tiny amount of floor space in his room, turning in futile circles and shaking his head. He sniffed once, twice. I got up and steered him to the bed again and sat beside him, then put my arm around his shoulders. He leaned into me, his head pressing against the bandage to send prickly fire through the raw spot beneath, but I didn’t move. Phil grew rigid.
“Is he gonna die?” Phil asked, his voice cracking.
“I don’t know.”
He finally drew away from me, and my neck burned with low-grade pain. Phil rubbed his reddened eyes, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. I plucked a Kleenex from the box by his bed and handed it to him. He honked his nose into it, tossed it into his trashcan.
“Damn that fat fuck.” Phil’s hands twisted at the loose bedspread at the end of the bed. “If he wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.”
“Phil,” I said, “I know it was Hurdles that did everything, but it wasn’t his fault. None of it.”
He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Let me back up for a while. There’s a lot I haven’t told you. There was never a good reason to lay it all on you, and until yesterday, I didn’t understand much myself…”
And so for the next thirty minutes, I told Phil about a Tri-Lakes and a Chris Anderson he didn’t know. When I was through, I sat back to see how Phil took it.
He sat on the edge of his bed, running his hands through his hair until it corkscrewed from his head. “So how does this fit in with Hurdles?”
I went slowly, searching for the right words. “Whatever’s left of that Viking can get inside you. Take you over, make you see with his eyes. It’s his afterlife according to his rules, and we’re the tool he uses to achieve it.
“Remember the night I fought that guy from Harden? You yourself said that wasn’t like me up there. I wasn’t thinking straight, Phil. I had all sorts of crazy thoughts in my head. And the night Valerie and I broke up because I did something to her. Then when Hurdles died this morning — a cop shot him and he fell on me — I felt it leave him. You hear people debate whether or not souls leave the body at death. Well, this wasn’t quite the same, but I know it can happen. I felt it.”
“So why didn’t you go off the deep end like Hurdles?”
“Because I think Olaf’s got something else in mind for me. I think all he wanted those times was to screw me up personally for a while. So he didn’t come in all the way.”
“Looks like it worked,” Phil said quietly, nodding to himself. Then he looked up at me. “What can we do about it?”
I shook my head “Not we, Phil. Me. And Aaron It’s all happened around us. We’re at the center of everything, because of who we are. And we’ve got to be the ones to handle it. If there even is a way to destroy something like that.”
“Burn it,” Phil said simply.
I pondered that. It made sense on the surface, but once you dug a little deeper you found loose ends. “Say we do manage to burn out the trees. Then what about the essence of the place? It’s just like Hurdles. It wasn’t him, but what got inside him.”
Phil leaned back on the bed. “I remember a long time ago when Mom would take me to Sunday school and once we learned about Moses leading the Israelites into the wilderness. Sacrifices were a big part of their worship. Burnt offerings. It was like the fire made something pure. There’s this one verse where God says how pleasing the smell of a burnt offering is to him.”
“This isn’t the same thing, Phil.”
“Maybe that part doesn’t matter so much. Fire and faith, that’s what matters. That’s what it took.”
Fire and faith. For someone who’d swallowed everything hook, line, and sinker up to now, I was suddenly turning skeptic. Almost. Phil surely saw that as he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“Swear something to me, Phil. That if you feel like anything weird is starting to happen, or if I have a chance to call and say that it looks like it’s starting to go down … that you’ll leave town. Because if Olaf thinks it’ll suit him, he’ll use you against me. I’m sure of it. So just leave town and don’t look back.”
He looked about ready to cry. “That’s the way you really want it?”
“No,” I said, taking a deep breath. “But that’s the way it’s got to be.”
Chapter 39
That Thanksgiving has to receive the award for the holiday I’d least looked forward to in my entire life.
I ate a light breakfast in a kitchen warm with sunlight and the aroma of a baking turkey. Mom stood at the counter, demolishing a loaf of stale bread for dressing. The TV sounded from down in the family room, with Dad switching between channels and finding parades, vigilant in his quest for the true spirit of Thanksgiving: football.
The relatives arrived around eleven, two carloads that had driven down in tandem from Effingham, better than an hour’s drive to the north. Grandma Iris was the only family Dad had left, and the rest was Mom’s. Great-aunt Molly led the pack, reeking of perfume and her upper arms waggling with what she still insisted on calling her baby fa
t. Grandma Iris came next, and I must admit my heart warmed at the sight of her. Next came the infamous Uncle James, Mom’s older brother, and his wife, Vicky, and their fourteen-year-old twins, Robbie and Robin (they looked a lot alike, but in truth, it only worked on her). Mom’s younger sister, Paula, divorced for two years, followed with her brood, two boys and a girl, all under ten.
Immediately I suspected that Mom had tipped them off in advance about the previous morning. Sympathy began to gush like a runaway oil well without so much as a word of explanation on my part.
“YOU POOR DEAR!” Aunt Molly swept me with her ample arms into her even ampler bosom She hit me with a wet, squelching kiss that fell dangerously close to my mouth. It felt like mashing a slug with your bare foot. “Now don’t you think a thing of it the rest of the day!”
She twirled with me, and absorbed as I was by her bulk, I had no choice but to twirl right along with her. Over her heaving shoulder I caught a glimpse of Aaron trying not to laugh at my plight.
I stumbled free just as Uncle James stepped forward to pump my hand. He was a fertilizer salesman, and his grip was firm and sure and dry. He flashed me his charming plastic smile with his charming capped teeth, and the stream of sunlight through the storm door formed a nimbus around his balding head. I still wasn’t convinced that this man was related to Mom and Aunt Paula. Surely he’d been abandoned on their childhood doorstep one dark and fateful night, and had weaseled his way right over the threshold before anyone knew what was happening.
“So we got us a hero in the family, huh? Yes, sir! We’re all mighty proud of you, Chris. Mighty proud!”
Aunt Vicky touched his arm. “Now, James, maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Chalk up two points for Aunt Vicky. Her eyes were reproachful and vaguely pandalike with too much blue shadow.
“Say hey, you gotta give credit where—”
He never got to finish, and I’ll always be grateful to Mom for her stepping in at this point. Fresh from a hug with Robbie, she stood for a second and appraised Robin, then exclaimed just a wee bit louder than necessary, “Robin? What a knockout you’re getting to be!”
It was all the diversion James needed. “You bet she is!” he said, and dropped my hand to throw an arm around her shoulders and hug her close. “I’m gonna have to install an extra phone line or two just to handle all the boys calling. Daddy’s little girl is growing up awfully fast.”
He rambled on, and Robin had this half-and-half expression on her face that seemed to translate into, Daddy, you know I love you and I always will because what kind of daughter would I be if I didn’t, but if you don’t lighten up I’m gonna BARF!
Aunt Paula shook her head lightly and stepped up close to me. “It’s a shame he never came with a volume knob,” she whispered to me, and we both laughed. Paula looked every bit Mom’s sister, pretty, with the beginnings of smile-crinkles around her eyes.
The reactions of my cousins were the easiest to tolerate, because they were the most genuine. Robbie likened me to no less than Clint Eastwood. Paula’s kids clamored to see under the bandage, a request that the newly escaped Robin rolled her eyes at and scorned as a real gross-out.
Mom herded everyone into the house like a tour guide, but Grandma Iris patted Dad’s arm and told him she’d be along in a few moments, and she lingered there at the landing with me. She was very short, almost what you’d call tiny — grandmothers always seem to shrink as they get older — but she stood so straight she seemed taller. Her hair, a silvery kind of gold, was pulled back into a careful bun, and her long face was gently smiling. She caught my hand with firm strength and pulled me a step closer.
“Chris, pay no mind to what they say. I love them as family even though they’re not blood, but I know a couple of them can rattle away without stopping to think first.” She chuckled throaty laughter, and her eyes were bright as polished stones. She squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. “But I am proud of you. Your mama tells me you did a brave thing. No telling how many others might’ve been hurt if you’d not been there yesterday.”
“If you say so.” I had to force that out with a smile. In my mind, I was saying something else: that nobody would’ve been hurt at all if I’d never been around to begin with. But I held it back. Because giving your grandmother reason to worry is almost as bad as making her cry, and you avoid both of those at all costs.
She stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. “But that’s the last you’ll hear of it from me.” She pointed up the stairs. “Better join the rest of them, or James’ll be starting up rumors.”
We packed together in the kitchen, but soon split into two groups. Archaic though it may have been, the women stayed in the kitchen, sipping coffee around the table, and the menfolk went downstairs to the family room and TV. The younger kids made the rounds between the two. Dad tossed a couple logs into the fireplace, then parried the burning embers with the poker. One log threatened to slip from the grate, and Dad hooked it with the poker’s barb and wrestled it back into place. Sparks showered up the flue. Dad returned to the couch beside Uncle James, who entrapped him with a fast-paced monologue about the present and future of fertilizer sales, and their uncanny parallel with the general world economy as a whole. Dad’s eyes soon glazed over and a mask of polite interest froze across his face.
Soon Robin joined us. Her coat was off by now, tossed onto a bed someplace. She wore a tight ski sweater, and I watched from the corner of my eye. Mom was right. Amazing, the difference a few months had made. She had breasts now, or at least a couple of healthy starts. And I suddenly flushed, feeling like a dirty old man at eighteen. Wouldn’t be long before I started hanging around the grade schools in a raincoat and no pants.
“Aw, come here,” Uncle James said when Robin showed signs of sitting on the floor. He leaned out to grab one of her wrists and tugged her almost off balance. “Why don’t you sit on your old dad’s lap for a while? I hardly get to see you more often than they do down here.”
Robin gave another of those queasy smiles, and did as he asked. James nuzzled her hair before resuming his monologue with Dad. He’d only missed about two heartbeats’ worth.
Morning gave way to afternoon and we ate around one. Tradition reigned again: The adults feasted at the dining room table while we younger offspring had to eat from a couple of card tables set up in the family room. I had an underlying suspicion that I would never make it beyond a card table in the family room. I could reach eighty years old and still be relegated to a damned card table.
After we’d stuffed ourselves into a collective coma, leftovers were sealed in Tupperware, card tables were broken down, dishes were washed. And the gender segregation resumed, as Dad and James ventured downstairs for football. A bit later, I walked back through the kitchen and caught Paula in the middle of a discussion of her tubal ligation. She lapsed into silence until I was past. At another time I probably would’ve eavesdropped from around the corner.
But not today.
I shut myself into the second-floor bathroom, turning on the exhaust fan to blot out the noise that filtered in. I sat hunched on the floor, back against the shower stall. The solitude was a blessing, the steady hum of the fan mindlessly comforting.
Maybe going ahead with the day was a mistake.
I curled onto the floor, eyes closing, not sleeping but drifting into a numb limbo.
Just let today be over, please.
Time meant nothing in here, where it was safe. Warm. Sheltered. I could’ve stayed behind this door until the grass outside grew past the roof and my car was a rusted hulk.
Just let it all be over.
I finally emerged, though, ready to face humans again.
When I walked back through the kitchen, Aunt Molly bitched about my hair and it was all I could do to keep from complimenting her on how she’d colored hers a shade of orange I’d never known existed.
But Paula stuck up for me, and I beat a retreat downstairs. It wasn’t long before Dad went upstairs and re
turned with a few bottles of Löwenbräu. One for himself, one for James, for me, for Aaron. I’d been hoping they were all for me.
I don’t think Dad has made it yet through a major holiday without falling asleep during the afternoon. The crackling warmth of the fire, the softness of the couch, the heavy meal topped off by a bottle of beer, plus the relatively new burden of his healing heart … it all proved too much for him, and he was soon asleep with his mouth slightly open. On second thought, this could have been a clever self-defense tactic to avoid James for a while.
“Catching flies,” Uncle James said, pointing at Dad and snorting. He looked at me with a toothy smile as if to say, Hey pal, let’s do some talking now. Just you and me, guy. “Tell me something, Chris. What was it like yesterday? Looking death right in the face?”
I toyed with the empty Löwenbräu bottle, swirling the traces of foam clinging to the bottom. “It’s sort of a blur.”
“‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’” James frowned, and he had a lot of forehead to do it with. “Who was it said that? Wasn’t that Ben Franklin?”
I swirled the bottle harder.
“William Shakespeare,” Aaron said softly, clenching his fists.
Apparently James didn’t hear him. “What the hell, it’s not important.” He shrugged, then smiled at me. I detested that plastic smile, now more than ever.
“You know, I like to think you got that courage from our side of the family.”
I steadied my hands by lacing them around the bottle. “Look, I wasn’t the only one there yesterday. There was a whole room full of people who stayed pretty cool under the circumstances, and one of them is sitting right there.” I pointed at Aaron. “That one did a lot more than you’ll ever know.”
A knot of wood exploded in the fireplace, and by this time Robbie and Paula’s older son were looking our way, their hand-held computer game forgotten. A tight constriction was rising in my throat, and heat prickled under my bandage. Cheering erupted from the TV, but none of us turned to see what was going on.