by Lee Irby
“They’ll kill me. You understand that, right?”
“Avery doesn’t have the guts,” Gibson laughs with a mordant chuckle.
“Not Avery. Stefan.”
A name I had yet to hear mentioned in conjunction with the Bastard Sons. “Who’s Stefan again?”
“We’re running out of time!” Gibson cries, pulling on my arm. Her hands are surprisingly strong, her grip robust. “Come on, it doesn’t matter. Stefan is a punk just like Avery and they’re both idiots. Graves, you’re being a total wuss. Stop being all dramatic so you can skip the wedding.”
“This isn’t a game, okay? Stefan shot somebody last night. I saw it.”
“Who did Stefan shoot?” Gibson remains skeptical but releases my arm to listen to the explanation, which comes in a staccato burst of fear and anger.
“This guy, you don’t know him. I don’t, either, really. His name was Nick or Dick, but Stefan was going bonkers and screaming about traitors to the cause, and that’s when I got out of there. He was going to shoot me next, and he still might, the crazy bastard. I think he’s the one who blew up the Lee statue.”
“Oh, totally!” Gibson shouts. “I see that!”
“Okay, okay,” I jump in, waving my arms as if to signal an incomplete pass in football. “That’s enough. This has gone way too far and you can’t sit it out, Graves. This guy Stefan sounds like a true menace to society and extremely dangerous, and you can’t let him continue to hurt other people, regardless of how you feel about the police. It’s wrong, plain and simple.”
“I’m not going to the cops.”
“Whatever, leave him alone,” Gibson says, once again taking my arm and generating a feeling that cuts a little too close to the bone, with my flesh a little too tingly and her body a little too close to mine. “We need to go check on Dad. I think he’s at Mom’s.”
“That’s ridiculous,” grouses Graves. Gibson flips her brother the bird, which he promptly dismisses with a faint sigh. “I’m serious, just stay out of his business.”
“I’ve caught him cheating before,” Gibson assures me.
“Maybe it’s not such a great idea,” I’m forced to admit, sorry that I ever agreed to her plan of snooping around. It’s not like my mother doesn’t harbor her own doubts of Mead’s fidelity, since she had what she called a “panic attack” in front of the restaurant where the ex-wife works. “What point would we be making? What purpose would it serve?”
“I won’t say anything,” she pouts. “I just want to know.”
All children of divorce dream of the reconciliation that will bring the family back together, that magic bullet of rekindled love capable of healing the rip in the soul. Gibson’s desire to ensnare her father in a trap is the obverse of this desire, which doesn’t mean it’s no less compelling. Given her womanly curves and abundance of sex appeal, it’s easy to forget that Gibson is barely out of her childhood, an adult in name alone, and often victim of her own conflicting emotions. For some reason it’s important to her to drive by her mother’s house, perhaps as a way of saying farewell to the dream forever.
“Okay,” I relent, suddenly struck by a sensation that was once familiar but lately has become alien—that of being a human being, one with compassion. “You promise it won’t take long?”
A tear struggles to escape her eye, and she brushes it away as one would slap at a gnat. So many holes become chasms, it’s a wonder we all aren’t swallowed up in the abyss of our lives. At one time Lola thought she could count on me to support her, offer solace and succor, and never leave her hanging…compared to an aspiring oncologist, what could I ever offer her? Or anyone?
Through sniffles, Gibson asks: “Can we stop for smokes, too?”
—
“Is this yours?”
Gibson is holding Lola’s iPhone in her hand, having scooped it up as she got into the Honda. Claiming it as mine won’t work because we’ve already discussed the merits of Android versus Apple, with me firmly on the side of my Google brethren. Being quick on my feet is a strength of mine, yet here the right lie escapes me and I flounder for a response.
“Oh, that?” I snort nervously, struggling to insert key into ignition. “My girlfriend left it in here.”
“Girlfriend? You never said you had a girlfriend. Who is she? What’s her name?”
“Doesn’t matter because we broke up. Here, let me have it.”
But Gibson ignores me and instead starts pawing at the screen, which is the last thing I want her doing. “Hey, someone named Mark called! Twice!”
“Let me have it, please.” I reach across and forcefully grab the iPhone from her with more intention than she was perhaps expecting.
“What the hell, dude! I was going to give it back.”
“You shouldn’t go through her personal stuff.”
“I was just looking at it.”
“I know what you were doing. Just forget about it. She’s not worth the trouble.”
“But how did she leave her phone in your car if you guys broke up?”
Driving around town with Gibson has been, except for a few bumps in the road, a mostly pleasurable experience, but not when she’s interrogating me about my love life. I was looking forward to listening to music with her, chatting about nothing, instead of this awkward conversation. Anger suffuses my voice, as it bubbles up inside. “I don’t know. I found it before I left to drive down here.”
“She must be pissed.”
“I’m taking good care of it. At least I was until you got your mitts on it.”
“Is Mark her new boyfriend?”
Am I even headed in the right direction? We’re approaching Cherokee Road, and common sense says we should take a right for access to Chippenham Parkway. I have no clue where her mother lives. “Which way?”
“Oh, yeah. Take a right. My mom lives off Forest Hill, not far from where she works. So is Mark her new flame or what? Is that why you two broke up?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I get bored easily.”
“Do you mind if we don’t talk about this? I hate to get all maudlin, but the wound is still pretty raw.”
“I thought you reconnected with one of your old high school sweethearts, the rich one. What happened to her?”
We’re passing by John Graziano’s house—that of his parents, anyway—when she pops this question, as unlikely as that might appear to be. Yet plain as day, parked in the driveway, is Leigh Rose’s SUV, with the distinctive Dancing Bear bumper sticker. The saga continues apparently, just without my participation.
Except I see her emerge from the house. Running.
I hit the brakes hard enough for us to skid to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Gibson asks, startled by my maneuver. Without answering I crane my head to get a good look at the scene, to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Indeed, Leigh Rose is sprinting across the lawn where we once played pickup football games and hide-and-go-seek, and then she hops into the SUV. She’s running but no one appears to be chasing her. There are no other cars in the driveway, either.
“You know that woman?”
“That’s her.”
“That’s who?”
The Tahoe recklessly backs up and then speeds off down Cherokee Road in the opposite direction as we’re headed.
“The old high school girlfriend.”
But why is she going that direction? She lives across the river…unless she’s going to my house. But why would she? No…she isn’t looking for me, is she? It doesn’t matter, I have to find out, and so I execute a hurried and artless three-point turn in the middle of Cherokee Road, nearly backing into a mailbox sturdy enough to have split my car in two, all while Gibson peppers me with questions and asides to which I can’t readily respond.
“What are you doing? Are you trying to kill us? You’re being a total freak right now! Calm down, dude!”
“I have to catch up to her!”
It’s a white-knuckle ride up
and down hills and around curves, but something tells me that Leigh Rose has finally made up her mind and now has taken the proverbial bull by the horns by making her break from those sleazeball frat boys. All isn’t lost! Just when things couldn’t have gotten any bleaker in my life, again the unexpected surges from the morass of defeat. There’s still time for us, the clock hasn’t run out. Yet, if I’m wrong, yes, that’s right: the dead will die again. What was over for good will end once more forever.
My Honda strains against the exertion of making up distance, but I manage to get within sight of Leigh Rose, in time to see her turn left on Traylor Drive! My street! She’s turning down my street! She loves me after all! Jeb admitted as much at the storage facility…
“See!” I exclaim in triumph, pumping my fist like I just hit a home run, “she’s looking for me! She’s driving to my house!”
“Why?”
“To find me. We fell in love. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true. We reconnected. It’s just one of those amazing things that happen sometimes, against all odds.”
Gibson reaches over to honk the horn but I brush her hand away. “Don’t jinx it! Just let it happen. Don’t get in the way.”
“Oh my God, you’re such a dumbass! She’s probably going to some other dude’s house.”
“She just ran away from her fiancé, so I highly doubt it.”
As we near the Stith homestead, Leigh Rose hits her brakes, just as she should if her destination is my abode. I slow down, too, of course, grinning like one of those idiots who are told they just won the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Because that is a bogus contest where there are no real winners. Just chumps.
“Cops!” cries Gibson, sinking low in her seat. My neck muscles tighten and my throat constricts as if I’d just chugged rat poison. “What the fuck should we do?”
Police cars have surrounded our house and the street is blocked. A line of three cars waits to speak to a patrolman directing traffic. I’m right behind Leigh Rose. But not for long.
“What are you doing?” Gibson screams at me.
“Turning around.”
“Why? Graves is in trouble!” Tears flood down her pretty face as I back into a neighbor’s paved drive. The Olsens, a couple whose children were quiet, passive, and sickly. Grace was the daughter, a year behind me in school. She was my date to the prom. Our first and last night out together. I asked her because I knew no one would. She barely had any friends and I was sick of the popular girls at my school who were as predictable as a twice-told tale. At first Grace thought I was joking and wouldn’t go with me, but I assured her I wasn’t. There was a tremulous beauty in her trying to get out of her prolonged adolescence. I turned out to be correct in my assessment: by the end of the summer, Grace Olsen had blossomed into a perfectly lovely young woman.
Day Three – July 3
My attorney is named Cynthia Fox and I’m not kidding. No, never will I kid again, because I find myself in grave legal trouble. Pardon me for sampling from Snoop Dogg, but murder was the charge that they gave me. No one accused of homicide can ever tell another joke or make a pun, but instead the jailed felon must grind onward and ineluctably toward acquittal. Can Ms. Fox, Esquire, lead me to freedom? Can she restore my good name, rescue my reputation, and prove this charge to be baseless? For my sake, I certainly hope so, though I’m not counting on it because I’m guilty as sin.
One salient fact about my legal counsel: she is extremely attractive, in the bookish, professional way of a natural beauty who has worked hard to establish herself in a career demanding that she prove that her brains exceeded her looks.
“Mr. Stith, I just have some basic paperwork you need to complete in order that I can begin to represent you in this matter,” she begins, in a voice strong and clear. A jury would fall in love with this woman. When she looks those twelve average Americans in the eyes and tells them I’m not guilty, they’ll believe her, especially the menfolk who’ve been conditioned to accept as fact whatever a beautiful woman says.
“My mother hired you?” The medication has made me feel extremely fatigued and detached. Risperdal is a very potent antipsychotic with dangerous side effects, but mostly it leaves me feeling stupidly drunk.
“She has retained my services, yes, but you need to agree to my representation.”
I could give you all the details right now. I could just disgorge my innards for you to poke through and we’d have an answer, a solution to the puzzle of the dead will die again. But I don’t know that I can do that. My hold on reality, according to the psychiatrist who examined me yesterday following my suicide attempt, is tenuous. So take my “confession” with a grain of salt. The state of Virginia thinks I’m psychotic, but not so psychotic that I can’t tell right from wrong, just psychotic enough to require medication.
“I agree,” I say gallantly. How I adore staring at her. It’s like I’m back in Prague on my Fulbright and I’m walking across the Charles Bridge when I see a fellow American—how like sore thumbs we stick out in the Old World!—a student from Slippery Rock College with the classic features of a Vogue model, who got drunk with me on cheap wine and ended up sleeping on the floor of my hovel by the Old Jewish Cemetery. We did not—I repeat—we did not have sex. This wasn’t my decision, but hers, and frankly she made a wise choice, given my homicidal propinquity.
“I’ll just need your signature on this document.”
She slides over a piece of paper that I don’t bother to look at. The line where my John Hancock is needed has been highlighted in yellow for me. The pen must weigh a hundred pounds and I struggle to hold it upright.
“Everything okay, Mr. Stith?”
“No. Yes. There, done.”
I slide the paper back to her and she deposits it in a manila folder with expert efficiency.
“Tell me you used to be a model,” I gush at her, and she registers no emotion as she sits across from me in the city jail’s cramped, cold room where lawyers confer with their clients.
“No,” she replies crisply, legal pad and pen arrayed before her.
But those cheekbones! That sinewy neck! The trim figure, the long legs, and most of all, the pellucid blue eyes that sparkle with genuine goodness, as if the Creator had hewn her being from the diminishing stock of Righteousness available in the universe.
“Where did they find the body?” I ask crisply.
“Pardon me?”
“The body? Where did they find it?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Stith. I’m here just to make sure the extradition hearing is fairly run and that your rights are protected. Do you understand that? I’m not your defense attorney. You’ll get one of those after you’ve been transferred back to New York and have been arraigned.” Her voice cracks a little as she explains the nature of our professional relationship, which might best be described as fleeting. She’s like a legal one-night stand. And she doesn’t seem to relish talking with me about the body of the deceased, and who could blame her.
But it matters to me. It matters only in the sense that I made attempts to bring comfort to the afflicted, the hallmark of a fully developed humanity. She had wounded me. She had given her heart to another, and yet still I gathered pine needles to support her lovely head, fashioned leaf litter into a kind of bower, and in those cold, dead hands, placed a hastily collated arrangement of chicory. It was her favorite flower. I wrapped her scarf around my neck and took her iPhone, which I was going to throw into the crashing waters of the falls but decided at the last minute to keep with me. In case she ever called. Or texted. And I knew she would, because I had to hear from my beloved.
As I hiked out of the park, steeled for the unbearable journey south, I saw that my number was right there on her screen. So I sent myself a text.
Take me with you. She was dead nevermore.
Then I took a selfie.
No…then I went mad.
It’s currently one p.m. on July 3, and any true Southerner worth a white hood and burning cross knows th
at right now, 150 years ago, George Pickett ordered his charge across the cornfield at Gettysburg, an act of idiotic bravery and savage heroism that captured, like nothing else ever could, the atomizing forces at work in the courageous hearts of a doomed breed. After the field was littered with dead, and the battle lost, Robert E. Lee surveyed the carnage and uttered the most honest words in all of American history, “It’s all my fault.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Irby teaches history at Eckerd College and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is the author of the historical mysteries 7,000 Clams and The Up and Up.
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