by Bill Bright
Finally—and not because he concluded his uncle was the lesser of two evils—Daniel braced himself for the onslaught and went inside.
“Daniel? Is that you? Oh, Daniel!”
Laying aside her Bible, his aunt Camilla catapulted from her chair and rushed toward him, her arms outstretched. “Thank God, you’re all right. I’ve been praying for you!”
Daniel allowed himself to be wrapped in her embrace. The top of her head came to just below his chin. Her warmth and the smell of her hair comforted him on a deeper level than he thought possible.
“You’re shivering!” she cried, holding him tighter.
A glance around the room revealed they were alone. The ogre must be upstairs in his den. Daniel allowed himself a moment to relax.
All too soon his aunt stepped back. Holding on to his arms, she looked up at him, her eyes brimming with concern.
Camilla Rush was a kindly woman with a round face framed by black hair pulled back and pinned up. If you asked her, she would say she was plump. Daniel thought of her as soft. If you asked, she would also point to the lines around her eyes as cruel indicators of advancing years, nearly four decades now. But Daniel loved the way her skin framed her eyes, the perfect setting for two azure pools.
She brushed dirt from the side of his face. Daniel winced.
“You’re hurt!” His aunt took a closer look.
Daniel touched his temple. It stung. Until now he wasn’t aware he’d been injured. It had probably happened when the barrel fell on him.
“It’s nothing,” he said, turning away from her.
“It’snot nothing,” she insisted. “Come over here by the fire. Let me look at it.”
The scrape itself didn’t concern him, except for the fact that it was evidence something had happened. Something that begged an explanation.
His aunt’s eyes narrowed. She sensed he was hiding something. “Daniel, have you been fighting?”
“No ma’am.”
She looked him in the eyes and believed him.She believed him! Was it any wonder he was fond of her? Uncle Asa would never believe him.
“We should put some ointment on those abrasions,” she said. “You wait here. I’ll get a damp cloth.”
She wasn’t gone long. Just long enough for Daniel to realize that now would be a good time to tell her what happened. He could gauge her reaction. Of course, she’d insist on telling Uncle Asa. Tonight.
No that was too soon. Daniel needed time to think.
He moved closer to the fire where his aunt had been sitting when he came in. Her Bible lay open on the Pembroke table. It was her practice to pray with an open Bible. She’d read a verse or two, then pray, read another verse, and pray, letting the text guide her. He bent over the book, curious as to the subject of her prayers tonight.
“Luke, chapter fifteen,” he muttered.
Anger sliced into his gut like a knife. He was familiar with the text. A lost sheep. A lost coin. A lost son.
He straightened up, furious. Is that how she thought of him? A prodigal? A wastrel? An ungrateful son who squanders his inheritance?
“Here we are,” his aunt said, carrying a small basin, a towel, and a bottle of ointment.
She set the basin on the table next to the Bible, dipped an edge of the towel in the water and reached toward him. “Now…are you going to tell me what happened?”
Daniel stood stiff and silent as she dabbed his temple.
“Your uncle and I were worried sick,” she said. “He went looking for you.”
Daniel grabbed his aunt’s wrist. “He went looking for me? How long ago?”
Before she could answer, the front door slammed open. The ogre himself stormed into the room in a rage, his head down, his cane leading the way. Bent over and grumbling, he looked like an angry bridge troll.
“I searched everywhere,” he groused, “and found no sign of—”
When he looked up and saw Daniel, his eyes narrowed to murderous slits, and his jaw did that clenching thing that made him look like a bulldog with its teeth sunk into someone’s leg.
“There you are!” he bellowed. “Where have you been? I’ve turned Cumberland inside out looking for you!”
For a man with a serious limp, he could move quickly if sufficiently motivated or angered.
“Asa, calm yourself,” Aunt Camilla said. “He’s home safe. That’s what’s important.”
Asa looked at his wife, the towel, the basin, and the scratches on Daniel’s face. “You’ve been fighting!”
“I haven’t been fighting,” Daniel replied.
“Then how do you explain those?” His cane jabbed the air in the direction of Daniel’s face.
“I haven’t been fighting,” Daniel insisted.
“I’ve seen enough fights in my day to recognize the aftermath of a common brawl when I see it. Tell the truth for once in your life. Who have you been fighting?”
Daniel’s chest swelled with so much anger, he thought it would explode. His teeth clenched, he sidestepped his aunt and made his way toward the stairs.
His uncle’s words hit him in the back. “We’re not finished. Come back here!”
Daniel paused on the first step. Without turning around, he said, “Yes, we are.”
He waited for the response he knew would come.
“If you have something to say to me, turn around and face me like a man.”
Daniel allowed himself a wry smile. There was nothing his uncle hated more than for someone to turn his back on him. With that small victory, Daniel bounded up the stairs two at a time.
“Go ahead, run away. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?” his uncle shouted.
Chapter 3
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Asa Rush let his shoe drop to the floor. He resisted throwing it down. He wanted to throw it. Needed to throw it. Needed to throw something.
“You should talk to him,” Camilla said as she brushed her hair in front of the vanity mirror. “If you don’t, you’ll never get any sleep.”
“Talk?” Asa scoffed. “There’s no talking to that one. All he does is sit and stare into the distance. I’ve had better conversations with cows.”
Camilla laughed. Her hair, when let down, fell to her hips. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I am not! The boy’s a stone statue.”
He wrestled with the buckle on his remaining shoe. The leather tongue was worn, creased nearly to the point of breaking. If he tugged too hard…
The tongue ripped from the shoe. For a second he stared at it dumbly between his thumb and forefinger.
It was all the excuse his dormant rage needed. With a cry of frustration, he threw the leather tongue across the room, followed by the shoe.
His outburst and the sound of the shoe hitting the wall gave Camilla a fright. A hand flew to her chest. “Asa!”
“We needed those shoes to last the winter!” Asa shouted, defending himself.
“That’s no reason to throw them across the room!”
“It’s the only reason I had.”
He sat slumped over with one sock on and one sock off, his chest rising and falling as though he’d just carried a heavy load up the stairs.
Asa Rush had always thought of himself as physically average and mentally unremarkable. He’d never been the best-looking man in a room, but neither had he been the worst. He’d never been the smartest man, but neither was he the dullest. At age forty-two, he continued his average ways. Like most men his age, his hair was showing streaks of gray, he needed glasses to read, and his muscles and bones were beginning to ache in places they’d never ached before.
Camilla crossed the room and sat next to him. She placed a hand on his hand. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she said softly.
“The boy does manage to bring out the worst in me, doesn’t he?”
“You’ve worked with troubled boys before,” Camilla said. “Is it so different that Daniel is your nephew?”
Asa stood. He couldn’t sit still.
He had to pace. Camilla folded her hands in her lap and watched him—one sock on, one sock off—limping back and forth, occasionally steadying himself with a hand to the edge of the bed. It took him a few moments to find the words.
“I don’t know why, but for some reason, my inability to reach Daniel strikes at the heart of my entire professional life. For years now I’ve felt like a failure. For some reason Daniel exacerbates that failure a hundredfold.”
“Asa Rush! Don’t say such things! I won’t have it! You’re not a failure. Everyone looks up to you. They wouldn’t entrust the education of their children to you if they didn’t have the utmost confidence in you.”
“That’s not enough,” Asa said. “That’s not why I became an educator. I wanted to do more than teach mathematics and science and philosophy. I wanted to mold them, to influence them.”
“As Dr. Dwight influenced you at Yale.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Surely, in all these years you’ve…what about—”
Asa cut her off. “No. I’ve had some good students…some competent students…but none who are any better off than they could have been in any other classroom.”
He knew Camilla was trying to help, but she didn’t know the depth of his sense of failure. Any listing of students’ names would only make things worse.
Staring at the hairbrush in her hand, Camilla asked, “Why have you never told me you felt this way before?”
Asa smiled wryly. “A man doesn’t easily admit his failures, not even to himself.”
His confession did, however, lessen his rage. Now his injured foot began to ache. He lowered himself once again onto the edge of the bed.
“I still think you should talk to Daniel,” Camilla murmured. “Something happened out there tonight.”
“The fight.”
“He was shivering when he came home, and I think it was more than the cold. He was scared.”
Asa hunched, as though settling in. Camilla was right, of course, but he didn’t want to do this tonight. He was cold and tired, and because of Daniel he’d have to get up early in the morning to finish grading the papers that would have been done if he hadn’t gone on a wild goose chase all over town.
“Every year he becomes more and more like his father, wouldn’t you agree?” Camilla asked.
Changing the subject was her subtle way of gloating. She knew he would go. That she’d won the argument. Now she would attempt to make his defeat more palatable with small talk.
“He may look like his father, but he has his mother’s stubborn streak,” Asa said.
He snatched the spare sock from the floor and put it on. Pushing off the bed, he went to get his shoe.
“What are you doing?” Camilla asked.
“Putting my shoes on.”
“You’re only going down the hallway.”
Retrieving his shoe, Asa headed back to the bed. “A man in bare feet is a man with no authority. That’s why the president of the United States always wears shoes.”
Camilla laughed. Making her laugh was Asa’s way of giving in to her.
“Was it this difficult for you when Dr. Dwight asked you to try to win over Eli?”
“That was different. I knew I was reaching Eli. Daniel’s nothing like his father that way.”
“How did you know you were reaching Eli?”
“Every chance he got, he pounded me into the dust.”
Camilla laughed again.
“But with Daniel—” Asa shook his head. “It’s as though he doesn’t hear me.”
“You never gave up on Eli.”
“I wanted to.”
“But you never did.”
“No.”
Camilla linked her arm in his. “Then don’t give up on his son.”
Sitting Indian-style on his bed, Daniel listened to the voices coming from the other room. Though he couldn’t make out the words, he knew they were talking about him. Whenever their voices got loud, they were talking about him. A sudden thud made him jump. The voices got louder still.
Daniel grinned. The thought of his reserved, ordained uncle throwing things struck him as humorous.
He pulled the recorder from his waistband, the instrument that had set the evening’s events in motion. Earlier, seated just as he was now, Daniel had begun playing it. His uncle yelled down the hallway, telling him to stop, saying it was too late to be playing a musical instrument. Daniel shouted that he’d go outside to play. The answer came back instantly. No, it was too late to go outside.
That was his uncle in a nutshell. The man who quoted rules, making them up on the spot—Daniel was certain—to get his way.
Well, Daniel was tired of it. Rules were for little kids. He was sixteen. Old enough to take care of himself. He didn’t need someone’s rules to tell him when to go to bed, when to get up, and when he could play his recorder.
That was when Daniel had gone out the window. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Daniel examined the recorder to see if it had suffered any damage in the scuffle. Holding it to the light of the lamp beside his bed, he thought he saw a scratch. He tilted it to get a better look while running a finger the length of the flaw. He picked at it with a fingernail. Bits of it came off. Holding his finger closer to the light, he examined the jagged black flecks. They felt sticky. They…
He dropped the recorder and recoiled as though it had bit him. Pushing himself away from it, he furiously wiped his finger on the bedspread.
The black flecks were blood.
Braxton’s blood.
Curled up and pressed against the headboard, Daniel stared at the black recorder in horror. He shuddered. The shudder turned into a shiver that took on a life of its own. He wrapped himself up in his own arms. When that didn’t stop the shivers, he pulled the bedspread over him.
The recorder rolled off the edge of the bed and clattered against the wooden floor. He made no effort to retrieve it.
The bedspread captured his body heat, and after a time the shivering stopped. With the warmth came drowsiness. Daniel’s eyelids grew heavy. He fought to keep them open, afraid of what he’d see if he closed them.
He knew it was a losing battle, but he fought it anyway. Eventually, time and fatigue, as they always did, proved themselves stronger than his will, and Daniel dozed off…
His dream had no sound.
Braxton’s head fell in slow motion, hitting the shiny, wet cobblestones, bouncing, knocking drops of sweat and spittle and blood in the air like some kind of grotesque ballet of liquids. Braxton’s eyes were fixed with fright, as if his last conscious thought was the realization he was dying. They stared directly at Daniel—only inches from his face. And because this was a dream, Daniel was helpless to look away or to close his eyes.
He tried to scream and found he had no voice. He tried to run even though he knew he was pinned to the ground.
The next thing Daniel knew, he was underwater. There was barely enough light to see. Broken pieces of wood floated all around him. Among the debris were two figures. A man and a woman, from their dress. Lifeless, they floated toward him. Like Braxton, their eyes were open but unseeing.
Daniel knew who they were before he could make out their facial features. As with Braxton in the alley, despite every effort, Daniel couldn’t turn, couldn’t swim away. Some unseen force forced him to look at them, to look into the eyes of his dead parents.
All of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe. There was no air underwater. And he knew what it must have been like for his parents when they drowned. Still conscious. Lungs bursting. Inhaling liquid. Saltwater filling their lungs. The drowsiness of death blanketing them, but not before they had time to know they were sinking to the bottom of the sea and that they were dying.
With a violent gasp, Daniel threw back the bedspread and sat up with a jolt. He greedily inhaled one gulp of air after another.
It took him a moment to realize he was in his bedroom. Voices came from the other
room, the same conversation he’d heard earlier. He had fallen asleep for a matter of minutes.
His heart was pounding wildly.
Chapter 4
Standing with his hand on their bedroom doorknob, Asa had both shoes on, but the one missing its tongue was loose and sloppy. He gave it a chagrined look. It would have to do.
“When you go in there, listen to him,” Camilla said.
“This is going to be the quietest conversation in the history of mankind,” Asa replied.
Camilla wasn’t listening. She was too busy telling him what to do. “Be patient with him. I don’t think he’s gotten over his parents’ deaths yet.”
“Of course he hasn’t. Neither have I.”
His admission took the wind out of Camilla’s sails. They hadn’t spoken of Eli and Maggy’s deaths in months. And though she knew Asa’s pain over the loss of his sister and best friend had to be enormous, never once had he admitted such to her.
Camilla went to him.
“Sometimes I look at the boy and think that somehow Eli’s been raised from the dead.” Asa blinked back tears. His voice broke. “I miss him horribly, Camilla.”
“As do I,” Camilla whispered.
Asa braced himself. “But grief does not exempt the boy from living by our rules. I would be doing him no favors if I let him believe he was exempt simply because life is sometimes cruel.”
“Of course not, dear. You need to be firm. Firm, but patient. Go in there and listen to him.”
Her sweet stubbornness brought a smile to Asa’s face. He caressed her cheek with his hand. “Yes, dear.”
His one shoe flapping, his cane clicking on the hard wood like a talon, Asa sounded like some kind of wounded bird flopping down the hallway.
Stopping outside Daniel’s door, Asa took a deep breath to calm himself. He took a second for good measure.
“Daniel?” he called gently. His ear close to the door, he listened and heard no response.
“Daniel?” he said a little louder, this time adding a triple rap with his knuckle.