And now, in this dark room, on the night his father fell and began to hasten toward death, his remembrance of lost passion flows on in him like a river of cerulean blue and enters the sea: Darla, earlier this evening, as she emerges from her study. He stands at her door, as is their way. Whoever of them first notices that it has passed a certain hour will go to the other and wait at the door. And she emerges as she always does, with a faintly startled look as she returns to him from the realm of her mind, and she gives him a soft sigh, as if yes, the workday is through and there you are and I am glad. And he feels, as he sometimes does at this, a swell of tenderness. He felt it when he stood in her office door this evening and he feels it again now, in this moment, in this bed, and Robert wishes to take Darla into his arms and hold her as close as he can.
He turns onto his side.
She is lying with her back to him.
He pauses.
Between Robert and Darla, when did sleep begin to trump desire? It has. And thoroughly enough that even as he desires her now, this is not a question he asks himself. He simply pauses from the fact of it. Perhaps it began after a certain number of years together, after they had come to a certain bone-deep familiarity; perhaps there was a crucial time or two when he turned to her and she was sleeping and, in waking to his touch, she simply patted the beseeching hand and coiled back into unconsciousness. Or perhaps it was she who first touched him in this way. For neither of them was it understood as a general policy. But something soon shifted. Being of a certain age, perhaps they indeed preferred their sleep and respected this preference in each other. And telling themselves it was only about this or that particular night, they did not realize what else might come of it.
Bob knows where he is. He is inside his head and his head is a deer tick swollen fat and he dare not move or a gnarled and hairy hand—it’s the hand of God, if you want to face facts, and Bob is ready to face facts—the hand of God will reach down and take his head between thumb and forefinger and He will squeeze and Bob’s head will explode with blood. All Bob can think to do is put his own hands on his head and try to hold it together. He draws his arms out from beneath the sheets, and he knows where he is. A thing he must learn over and over today, it seems. He’s in the eight-bed observation unit off the emergency room. He’s been here before for something or other. The place smells of his mother. Her Clorox. Her sponging it on kitchen cabinets, on counters, on the sink in their single-wide. Her hands smelled like this place. Always. Softly, she would grunt and growl and wheeze at the sponging, she would weep at the sponging. He puts his hands on his head, a palm over each ear, his fingers reaching up, pressing hard until the bed can take him and he sleeps.
Then he wakes, and nearby a voice says, “Brother Bob.”
Bob begins to turn his head in that direction and the pain rushes like a breaker of blood into his right eye, crashing and foaming there.
A hand is upon his head.
This will be it. Finally. The big squeeze.
But the hand simply rests on him, and Bob focuses his eyes to see Pastor Dwayne, who is in the midst of a prayer, the details of which elude Bob. But presumably they are to fix all this.
“In the name of Jesus,” Pastor Dwayne concludes, and he draws his hand away. He smiles.
Bob’s head still hurts.
Pastor Dwayne says, “How are you doing, Brother Bob?”
“Brother Bob’s head hurts like a sonofabitch,” Bob says.
Pastor Dwayne maintains his smile. Even warms it a little. “The Lord spared you from serious harm.”
Bob says, “Have you found out who it was the Lord spared me from?”
“I’m afraid there’s no way to determine that. The man was long gone when we found you. As you well know, we freely offer that space to anyone in need.”
Bob’s body wants him to sit up in umbrage, but the pain in his head checks that impulse instantly.
“Be still now,” the pastor says. “I’m here to help you. The hospital will keep you for only twenty-three hours. That time is almost up. But I’ve spoken with the social worker. They’d normally find you a halfway house for a few days. I’ve asked if I might take you in at the church, and they’ve agreed, if that’s all right with you.”
Bob pops a little breath in halfhearted assent. You always take the handout in front of you.
“After your head feels better, perhaps we can find you some work,” Pastor Dwayne says. “Our Heavenly Father brought you to us for a purpose.”
Bob would dispute this now if another sea wave of pain weren’t rolling through his head. Heavenly or not, a father just wants to fuck with you. Bob knows the pain has helped him out. Don’t push back at the old man if there’s anything more to be had from him.
And so by mid-morning Bob has an inflatable futon and a reading lamp and a New International Holy Bible in a conference room off the church office, converted to a temporary living accommodation so readily that he knows other Hardluckers have preceded him in this place. Bob is wearing flannel and denim, new to him, with the smell of cheap dry cleaning layered over intractable Goodwill funk. He has showered. He used the talcum powder set out for him. He has new underwear. He knows he better not stay.
Pastor Dwayne has blessed him and encouraged him to rest and to read today and to take his pain medicine, and he has promised a nice chat later this afternoon, when he has finished his day’s errands. In the meantime, Sister Loretta, the church secretary in the next room, will help him in any way he needs.
Sister Loretta, buxom and no doubt well talcumed, was standing in the conference room doorway beaming and nodding at him in assent through all of this encouragement, though now that Pastor Dwayne has gone on his way, she has returned to her desk and is presently on the phone talking to a friend. Her voice pitches suddenly lower, though Bob, bending near to the frosted glass panels edging the door, can still hear her speaking kindly of the poor unfortunate in the conference room who the pastor feels responsible for, but it’s okay, the friend should come pick Loretta up at noon, as the poor man is fast asleep. She can take an hour away. Pastor Dwayne won’t mind.
Shortly after noon Loretta is gone and Bob steps from the conference room. A distant corridor rings with hammering. A man in coveralls carrying a ladder passes by on the gravel beyond the office windows and Bob steps back to put the conference door between him and any possible glance.
The footsteps on gravel recede and all is quiet. Even the hammering stops for a few moments, and Bob stays where he is till it resumes.
He crosses the room, passes Loretta’s desk, and he opens the door into the pastor’s office.
Bob is not a thief.
He has not been a thief for decades, and even then it was for only a few years in his late teens. He never used a gun. Never a gun. He was quiet. He was an amateur. He stopped after a couple of whiffs of jail but before he had a permanent record.
He does not enter Pastor Dwayne’s office with the intent to steal anything. He does not have even a flicker of a thought to do so.
Now that he’s standing in the room, the door closed behind him, the bright chill silence of the January morning pressing against the windows, Pastor Dwayne’s massive mahogany desk crouching before him, Bob could not say why he’s come in here. Better simply to put on the sweater and overcoat and watch cap and gloves they’d gathered for him from some donation bin and to walk away right now, while no one is looking.
But this man Dwayne has found an empty La-Z-Boy in Bob’s head and has taken a seat and put his feet up. Though he’s playing it smarmy for the moment. When he stood before the fresh-scrubbed and newly clothed Bob, he explained about his errands and what he expected of Bob for the day’s activities, and then he stopped talking and he took a moment to look at Bob, up and down, and he said, “I see something in you.”
Maybe that’s why Bob is standing in the man’s office now. Do you know me? Who the hell are you that you know me? Bob will turn the tables on him. Figure him out. I bet I know you.
The wall beyond the desk, between two windows looking into a tree line, holds a bronze cross up near the ceiling, and beneath are frames and frames.
Bob circles the desk and approaches.
A cluster of color photos. Dwayne and wife. Bob does not look at her face. Dwayne and his sons: young Dwayne and child boys; older Dwayne and teenagers; old Dwayne now and men. Arms around one another’s shoulders.
Bob moves his eyes sharply away from the family photos, all featuring that Jesus-aping loving father, Pastor Dwayne Kilmer. Bob’s gaze lands on another arrangement.
A diploma for a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Bob Jones University.
A photo of Pastor Dwayne shaking hands with the governor of Florida, the two men grasping hands but looking at the camera, the governor a bald man with a lunging, sappy smile like the smiles of the Hardluckers you need to watch out for in the shelters at night.
A typed letter, framed in gold plate. At the top is an eagle sitting on crossed rifles, the NRA logo. Dear Pastor Kilmer. I am grateful to you for your support in our efforts to protect our Second Amendment rights. What our opponents do not understand is that we have a First Amendment only because we have a Second. Men of God such as yourself …
Bob skips to the signature. He cannot read it. The first name appears to begin with a great, curvy P and the rest is a tight march of undifferentiated letters that could be all u’s or m’s or n’s or l’s. Then Bob’s eyes slide to the right, to what he realizes is a companion frame, and he thinks he recognizes the square-jawed man speaking behind a lectern. Back to the letter. The logo. And yes. The man’s name is printed in small type beneath it. Not a P, in the signature. A fancy C. Charlton Heston. Bob’s old man loved this guy. Moses the gunslinger.
Bob looks abruptly away from this wall, turns around.
He starts, as if someone has snuck in behind him.
But it’s the high back of Dwayne’s desk chair.
Bob circles it.
Sits in it.
He puts his arms along the arms of the chair.
He settles himself. As best he can, for his head is quick-thumping in pain.
There’s nothing to do for that. Just push through it.
He begins to open drawers.
Center drawer. Ballpoint pens. Paper clips. Cluttery little crap.
He’s having trouble concentrating, trouble seeing things clearly. But the thumping slows a bit. Bob knows it’s his heart beating in his head. It’s his heart driving the pain.
He opens the top drawer in the desk’s right-hand pedestal. More clutter. Brochures for the church, a bottle of aspirin, a granola bar, a phone-charging cord. In the second drawer are pristine envelopes, stamps, a stapler.
Bob hates this guy. As if he were lying to Bob’s face. This bland daily shit. It’s all lies.
He slams the second drawer and pulls at the bottom one. It won’t yield.
Bob pushes back in his chair and looks at the drawer. It’s the deepest one. Files probably. Who gives a damn?
But Bob doesn’t like Dwayne keeping his secrets. The drawer has a simple pin tumbler lock. And Bob still has a small skill from his teenage thieving days.
He opens the central drawer and removes two paper clips. He bends one to work as a torque wrench, the other as a rake.
He has to leave the chair. His head and his knees begin to scream at him in pain but he makes himself crouch down. He is determined now.
He draws near to the lock. He inserts the first paper clip, turns it, holds the tension, inserts the second, and he begins to rake the pins inside the lock. His fingers fumble a bit for a moment, but long ago he had a good feel for this, and his muscles quickly remember and he rakes again and once again and the last pin slips into place and the lock yields.
He opens the drawer.
Vertical files, but they’re pushed to the back. Forward, lying at the bottom of the drawer, is a Glock 21 pistol, and a box of .45 auto cartridges.
And Bob thinks: Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne. Pastor Dwayne. Dreaming of ISIS sending a few boys over here to Tallahassee to bust in and rape Loretta and grab you and cut off your head, but you’re ready to defend your First Amendment church with your Second Amendment Glock, you’re ready to protect your flock like a good father should, like a good shepherd, like a Heavenly Father.
Heavenly Father my ass.
Bob’s own voice in his own private head has clambered heavenward to the oldest old man of them all.
Sneering all the way, of course.
And another sea surge of pain swells in him and crashes behind his eyes and tumbles down his face and into his throat and into his chest.
Punishment for the sneer, no doubt.
And he hears a voice.
Not his own.
A loud voice.
A big fucking loud voice.
I’VE BROUGHT YOU HERE FOR A PURPOSE.
Bob’s not crazy. Bob knows he’s hearing this voice in his head. But just because it’s inside his own private head doesn’t mean it’s not a voice. A real voice. Talking to him. Every voice you ever hear when you’re right there in the room with it still has to pass through your head. Even if you close your eyes and make the face and the mouth saying the words vanish, the voice remains, talking away. So where is it then? In your head. Your own private head. Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
The voice pauses.
A beating pulse of pain in Bob’s head.
An invitation to litany.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
And Bob responds: To make me okay.
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE.
To be okay.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
To you. To you.
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE.
To arm myself.
And Bob takes up the Glock 21 and its box of cartridges. He closes the drawer, and he uses his boyhood skill to reengage the lock. And he thinks: Dwayne’ll never know. He won’t even miss his weapon till the Viet Cong bust in and then he’ll know and he’ll go Oh shit and they’ll cut off his head.
Earlier this morning, as Pastor Dwayne negotiates Bob’s release into his care, Robert reassures Darla that she needn’t go to the hospital today—his father would surely be embarrassed to be seen in an invalided state—and she goes off on her run. Robert is drinking his coffee at the kitchen island, aware still of the spot on his cheek where Darla kissed him good-bye. A utilitarian kiss, surely, conveying gratitude for a courtesy rendered, but it landed wetly there, as if her lips were parted. Perhaps not so surprising; she is, after all, ardently grateful. He can well understand her gratitude. He doesn’t want to go either, for a low-grade dread won’t stop niggling at him over this visit.
He takes the last sip of his coffee and carries his cup to the sink. The dread is not just about his father, but about his mother as well. And thinking of her, he thinks of the index card.
He turns from the sink and realizes where the card is. He puts his hand in his pocket and draws it out. She has written James. What was in her head? Is her use of his never-used formal name a rebuke of her other son? An attempt to distance herself, shield herself? But the card was intended for Robert’s eyes. It’s just another dramatic pose. Beneath is a phone number with a 705 area code.
This will be a day rife with choices between one unpleasant option and another. The present decision: call his brother after all these years and risk actually having to deal with him, or incur further implorings from his mother to help reconcile the family. The latter will be tedious in a familiar way. The former is disturbing in being so unfamiliar. But the prospect of a call to Jimmy at least stirs Robert’s morbid curiosity. If the conversation goes badly, so be it. Robert will simply hang up the phone and that will be that till they’re all four of them dead.
Robert takes the phone from its cradle near the foyer and carries it to the living room. He sits in the recessed window seat at the opposite end from the French doors to
the veranda.
He dials.
Jimmy grasps the phone at the first ring.
He is sitting at his kitchen table, facing the forest. The phone was already beside him. Linda rose early and was gone when he came downstairs. Her note said that Becca was having a meltdown. Jimmy has been expecting Linda to call and check in, as the two of them were intending first thing this morning to discuss a long-overdue switch from DSL to UPS Canada. The expectation of her call was strong enough that he has not looked at caller ID.
With a voice thick with spousal familiarity he says, “Yes?”
The resultant beat of silence straightens him up in his chair. Somehow he knows it’s Florida again.
Robert was expecting—was hoping—to leave a barebones message on an answering machine and put the burden of all this onto his brother. But the sudden, surprisingly familiar, surprisingly warm voice ratchets instantly into their shared past. Robert knows the warmth isn’t for him. Not that this disappoints him. His brother was simply expecting someone else. For a moment Robert thinks to hang up.
But instead he says, “Jimmy?”
Jimmy doesn’t recognize his brother’s voice immediately.
Robert understands the next few moments of silence as It’s you, is it? What the hell are you doing, calling me? Robert almost hangs up.
But the voice registers now on Jimmy. “Robert?”
“Yes.”
They both fall silent.
The same impulse stirs in Jimmy that prompted him to simply erase yesterday’s message. Touch the button. Keep the dead in their graves. He does not consciously consider this, but the years have worked away some of the softer rock of his brother’s estrangement. It’s still bouldered up in his head. But not like his mother’s. So he says, “Mom put you up to this.”
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