by Brian Hodge
Uncle James laughed with all the charm of a cornered rat, a high, quavery sound. “Well, sure he did, sure he did.” He licked his lips. “But, uh, you were the one with the show of guts, that’s all I’m saying.” He smiled again, hesitantly, and it suddenly dawned on me what he was doing. I could see it in the desperation nurtured by the years of kissing ass and swallowing pride. He was looking for approval.
Aaron rose to his feet, slowly and deliberately. “Yeah. I was there.”
I should’ve been hoping Aaron would go easy. But I couldn’t find it within me.
“I was there. You talk about guts? I’d like to see how you’d react when you’ve just seen someone’s guts blown out in front of you.” Aaron lifted his arms out from his sides, brought them down again swiftly, like he was itching to hit something. “Why don’t you just go back home where you belong? Go sell some more sackfuls of shit.”
Aaron was up the stairs before anyone else moved. James sat looking blank and dazed. He blinked several times, tugged at his collar, cleared his throat, gave another high-pitched laugh. “Who, ah, who scored that last TD, huh?”
I shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you,” I said, and settled back in my chair. “Sorry about Aaron,” I added a moment later, although if he wanted a sincere apology, he’d have to wait. “It’s not been an easy couple of days for either of us.”
James nodded rapidly, eyes rapt upon the TV screen. For once he seemed at a loss for words, and I hoped, for Aaron’s sake, that he would have the decency to keep it that way.
The day dragged on and on, and ended as most of our family reunions did: everyone packed in the family room while Mom and Paula and James (always with the two sisters ganged up on him) began to reminisce, laughing and telling and retelling stories that ranged all the way back to childhood. This was a good sign — once they ran out of stories, it meant the day was over. I didn’t listen, but instead watched the fire and lost myself in its flames. My mind was far away, recalling stories that dated back a lot further than twenty and thirty years. I was falling back centuries.
Their stories waned sometime before six o’clock, and everyone seemed to glow with mellow nostalgic smiles, washed in flickering orange.
Uncle James yawned loudly and stood, scratching his ribs. “I guess we better be moving on,” he said. Then he bent down and squeezed Robin’s thigh and shook it. “We better get you home, good-lookin’.”
Mom and Dad told them they didn’t have to rush off, but this was mere formality. They were ready to leave, and we were ready for it, as well. We all stood, groaning and still complaining of overeating, and we began to migrate upstairs. Coats were retrieved, goodbyes were made, farewell hugs and kisses were exchanged. And at last the entire herd moved from our landing and down the walk to their cars. We waved and Mom shut the door when their engines came to life.
And the house fell wonderfully silent.
“That’s that,” Mom said, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead.
Dad nodded. “Safe until Christmas.”
I made my solitary way back to the family room, sat by the fireplace, knees against the hearth. Aaron joined me a few moments later, wordlessly sitting beside me as if to join a vigil. I jabbed at the logs with the poker, sending a cascade of sparks up like fireworks. It gave me a pleasant rush of power. Fire and faith. Long-dormant muscles seemed to be flexing inside, readying themselves for battle.
For I knew my roots … our roots. And with that, I had decided, came our destiny.
Chapter 40
Aaron had to go into work the next morning, and I decided to take him instead of Mom or Dad, which would’ve made more sense since they also had to leave home. I’m not sure how Aaron and I came to agree on this arrangement, but I do know why. We were starting to cling to one another for support. We had to. Because there was nobody else like us around.
“Some way to spend your Friday off,” I said in the car. “How come you’re down for a day shift?”
“Somebody has to come in,” he said. “Most of the normal day crew wanted off today, for trips and stuff. They all have more seniority. So, lucky me, I lost the coin toss.” He shook his head. “Of all times to throw me a curve like this.”
I drove slowly to maximize our time together, stopping for yellow lights that I ordinarily would’ve sailed through
“You think Mom or Dad knows about me blowing up at Uncle James?”
“Probably not. Probably never. Besides, even if they did, they both know he’s an asshole.” I laughed, sort of, because we were between a familial rock and hard place of past and present. “You can’t pick your relatives any more than you can pick your ancestors.”
Aaron nodded. “Looks like we got screwed from both directions.”
We had a laugh over this, but it was sad laughter, the laughter that comes from situations where you have to either laugh or cry. The laughter of longing for the simplicity others know in their lives, and the relatively petty consequences of their own concerns. How wonderful it would’ve been to have stolen a few laughs at Uncle James’s expense and feel them tempered with a little guilt since he was Mom’s brother and have it go no deeper than that. But such was not our luck.
“We’re going to win in the end,” I said after a while.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am. It’s in our bloodline, the part that shows the most. We’ve beat Olaf before, and we can beat him again. Don’t you feel that?” I hoped I sounded more enthusiastic than I actually felt.
He looked at me, his face serious. And older. “No. I don’t. Even before I knew all the reasons, I felt like everything was gonna end in disaster.”
It was hell of a note to end things on. I was just wheeling into Chuck Wagon’s parking lot.
“Just hang in there, Aaron. Please. I need you.” I stared into his eyes. “I mean that.”
He clasped my hand and nodded. Then grinned. “Just be here when I get off at two. I need you, too.”
Aaron left the car and I watched until he disappeared into the building. Be safe, I willed him, then pulled out east onto Broadway. A couple minutes later I passed the mall, and on impulse I swung in. Anything would’ve been better than going back to an empty house. So I checked out the Christmas season kickoff to kill time. I ran into Valerie Waters and we had a halfway civil chat. It left me with a pleasant glow inside that I carried back to the parking lot an hour later.
Until the ambulance shot by on Broadway. Heading west.
It was one of those moments of supreme terror when every logical molecule in your body tells you that it has nothing at all to do with you … and yet your heart knows otherwise. And if there was anything the past few months had taught me, it was to pay attention to gut reactions. As I heard the siren swell and fade, all sorts of crazy thoughts capered in my head. Ideas about Olaf, how he’d found a wonderful new host that Aaron would never suspect. Welcome to Valhöll.
I sprinted to my car. Traffic was already in a hellish snarl, and five minutes went by before I even managed to get in line at an exit. I beat my fist against the wheel while battling an urge to lay on the horn.
I followed Broadway for two blocks, then swung into the steak house lot. They were in a lull, between their breakfast and lunch crowds, so there weren’t many cars. Which left more room for the ambulance, parked by the employees’ door toward the rear of the building.
I wouldn’t even let myself think. Not yet.
I bolted from the car and ran for the building, thinking I could hear someone crying. The ambulance beacon was throwing a red wash over the building, the nearby cars, the faces of the people inside the doorway as a medic opened the side door and unlatched the back of the ambulance.
Rolling wheels … I stood near the doorway and watched as the crew carted out the most revolting thing I’d ever seen. Someone in a western shirt lay on that stretcher, but you’d never know it was a person by looking at the face. It was covered with blisters, huge and darkly crusted over, the featur
es no longer clearly defined. The mouth cracked open with a strangled rasp.
I leaned against the wall, looking anywhere but that ruined face, afraid I’d be sick. But I realized I’d seen a frazzled knot of red hair, and I hung on to that because Aaron’s was brown. Except if he wasn’t the victim, he…
No. No way. Aaron couldn’t have done that. Not that.
The ambulance doors slammed shut and in another moment the siren wailed into life as they sped away. A few employees drifted around the door, guys in western shirts and girls in brown jumpers, all wearing those silly hats. Some cried; all were a pale, ashen gray.
Aaron wasn’t among them.
I found him inside, sitting on the floor in a hallway that led back to the offices. He was holding his knees to his chest and staring a hole into the floor. Silent, still as a statue.
“Aaron?” I said softly.
“It was an accident,” he whispered.
I squatted beside him. “What was?”
“Maurice, that was him.”
Their widely loathed manager.
Aaron looked at me, and in his eyes he appeared to have just finished a hundred-yard dash through hell. “Chris, it was an accident, I swear it!”
I gripped his shoulder. “Just tell me what happened.”
His eyes squeezed shut, and when he opened them a moment later they didn’t look any better. “We were filling the fryer vats, and we turned on the power. Somehow some oil leaked onto the floor. When he came around later to bitch me out about it … Chris, all he did was look at me weird, and I freaked, ‘cause I got to wondering what if Olaf used him to get at me. And then…” He wiped his hands across his face, already slick from the heat of the kitchen. “ I … I don’t know what happened, it was over so quick, but … I guess I pushed at him and he slipped in the oil … and he fell and his face went into the fryer vat. Just like that drawing I made back in the summer!”
I thought I’d be sick all over again, because I knew how hot those vats got. Hot enough to turn an icy-hard chunk of frozen potato into a steaming French fry in less than a minute. Yeah, getting sick then would’ve been about the easiest thing in the world.
But we didn’t have the time. “Come on, Aaron. Let’s just get you out of here.” I pulled him up with me and steered him out the door. We’d forgotten his jacket, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold.
He started to cry in the car, and went at it hard and furious. “Chris, I just can’t take this anymore. I’M COMING APART!”
When the hell will this ever end? It was a nightmare that steadily got worse, and we couldn’t wake from it.
“This is what he wants, Aaron, this is exactly what he wants. Every tear you cry, that’s one more laugh he gets! So hang on. Just. Hang. On. Because if you don’t, then we both go down.”
He swiped at his eyes, his nose. “I can’t do anything anymore, can’t go anywhere … it just follows me, no matter what.”
I know, I know.
“MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD AND IT’S MY FAULT, MY FAULT!”
I held the wheel and I held my tongue, because nothing I could’ve said would have made the slightest bit of difference. I knew this because nothing anybody else could’ve said would have eased the smallest fraction of the guilt in knowing Rick was dead because of me. And in that respect, Aaron had suffered even more than I had.
So I drove, drove until he cried himself out, then headed for home. Because it seemed that home was the only safe place left. Our final refuge.
But when I saw Mom’s car and Dad’s truck both home from work, before they’d even have reason to be home for lunch, I knew that more bad news was on the way.
Chapter 41
There are a lot of terrible things people do to one another. I know, because I’ve seen many of them done, and if I never see another, it’ll still be too many. In fact, I’ve even done a few myself. You could ask a guy named Wendell, from Harden. Or Valerie Waters. You could ask Hurdles about the time he found his ass painted blue, if he were still alive.
But there’s one that ranks at the top of the list, and it’s almost a universal taboo, even in places where killing is an everyday event. Crighton had mentioned it as being one of the things that got a group of Vikings cast from their home.
Incest is bad enough. But it’s even worse when it’s forced. And worst of all when it’s forced on a child.
For a few minutes, even my own secrets were forgotten as I stood in the kitchen and listened to Mom explain the phone call she’d gotten that morning.
“Dad and I are leaving for Effingham in a few minutes,” she said in a brittle voice not much louder than a whisper. Her teeth were working at her lower lip like I hadn’t seen in years. “Paula called me at work.”
Dad stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, massaging gently. Both of them had their eyes cast downward, as if they found it hard to meet Aaron’s and mine. It was a look of shame. And Mom’s face was pale with sick revulsion that she was trying to overcome.
“Uncle James tried to molest Robin this morning.”
I’m sure I can speak for Aaron as well as myself when I say the news hit home like a piledriver. No doubt we were all remembering Uncle James’s behavior toward her the day before: his preoccupation with her blossoming beauty, his insistence on being physically close to her. In retrospect, it was easy to say that a problem situation might have been developing.
But only Aaron and I knew what, in all likelihood, had pushed him over the brink.
“Are they sure?” I said, knowing how stupid it must’ve sounded.
Mom nodded. “Vicky walked in on it this morning. It happened before Robin had even gotten out of bed.”
Once again, that urge to retch. It was all too easy to picture James entering her bedroom with a ready smile in place, waggling his eyebrows and furrowing his acre of forehead. Sitting beside Robin as he woke her with a touch, perhaps a kiss. All too easy to hear him say, “Growing up sooo fast, babe … yes sir … and I’m proud of that, mighty proud…” And smiling the whole time. .
“Paula called me at work,” Mom repeated. “She said Vicky had taken the kids and left the house and gone to Grandma Iris’s. She thought that if James came looking for them, he’d be less likely to try there than at Paula’s. So Paula’s there now, too. She sent the kids to a friend’s, and…”
Mom just shook her head. She looked as if the thing she wanted most in the world, aside from replaying the morning as a version where everything had begun normally, was to renounce every blood cell that bonded her to Uncle James.
“They called me because I’ve handled cases like this before, thought I might talk to Robin and get her out of her shell. Help them get started in some counseling past the crisis stage.” Her lip was starting to appear ragged by now, but she’d quit working at it with her teeth. The professional composure was starting to settle into place … but then it slipped a moment. “I could kill him now. I think I really could.”
“How come you’re going, Dad?” Aaron asked. “Another man is probably the last thing Robin wants to see.”
Dad nodded. “That’s what she said.” He gave Mom’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll keep out of Robin’s sight. But they’re all at my mother’s home now. And if James shows up, I’ll make sure he never gets past the driveway.”
I prayed it wouldn’t come to that. Physical confrontation was the absolute last thing he needed.
They went for their coats, and Mom for a briefcase, as well. Aaron and I shuffled over to our seats at the kitchen table and sat down, too numb to do anything else. Mom and Dad hadn’t even noticed that Aaron was home hours early, or his bloodshot eyes. One crisis at a time, I guess.
I found myself wondering if Robin had noticed a particularly foul smell emanating from James earlier in the day.
“This is it,” I finally said, and Aaron looked up. “Once they leave, we’re all alone.”
Aaron didn’t even look surprised.
Eleven-thirty.
Mom and
Dad had been gone fifteen minutes, and Aaron was scrubbing himself in the shower. He said he could feel the fryer oil on him. I could sympathize. Sometimes I was convinced I was still slimed with Hurdles’s blood.
I picked up the kitchen phone and punched Phil’s number. He answered, and I was grateful for small favors. I couldn’t have handled his mother’s concern.
“It’s me,” I said.
A pause, pregnant with trepidation. “What’s going on?”
“It’s going down today, I think. Today, tonight. Soon, I guess.”
He sucked in a breath. “How do you know?”
“Family emergency. Nobody’s dead, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Sure. Tell that to Robin. “Mom and Dad have left. Aaron and I are all alone now.”
Silence from his end.
“Phil, you promised me. So leave. As soon as you can.”
Phil — loyal friend, faithful chauffeur, confidant, and a thousand others — heaved a big wavering sigh. “There’s got to be another way. I mean, I’ve never run out on you before.”
I shut my eyes, clenching them as hard as little fists. Hate him, something inside said. You have to hate him now, because it’ll probably be the greatest kindness you’ll ever do him.
“You want to do me a favor, asshole?” I shouted into the phone. I pictured him with Valerie, sneaking off with her behind my back every chance he got. I pictured him with every girl I’d ever liked. In the back seat of my own car. I heard them all laughing at what a fool I was for never catching on. I pictured him pointing his finger and laughing at me, calling me a loser because I couldn’t even pick my own college, I had to follow him like a shadow. “Just fuck off and leave me alone from now on.”
“No, wait, I—”
“You think I need you?” I said. “I DON’T NEED ANYONE WHO’S SO WEAK HE STANDS THERE AND LETS HIS DAD WHIP A SCAR INTO HIS BACK!”