by Richard Cox
Because David had known his dream life would eventually come crashing down around him. He wanted to believe his ability to identify investment opportunities was an innate quality that had been honed over time, that his vast fortune—nearing ten figures now—had been built on merit. But a little voice inside his head
said don’t look back you can never look back
argued that many of his financial decisions had been nothing more than guesses. Sure, Qualcomm had for a while been everyone’s favorite telecom pick, but few investors had been perceptive enough to divest before the company’s stock was shot down like an enemy jet. David had also purchased plenty ofAmazon and Apple and took chances on some long-forgotten dotcoms, but what had possessed him to inexplicably plow his fortune into low-risk securities just before the stock market became a sinkhole in 2000?
“Let’s go to bed,” he said to Meredith. “Thanks for offering to listen but I don’t have anything to say right now.”
In the sheets Meredith curled behind him, and the fiery warmth of her skin pressed against his, typically a guarantee of arousal, repulsed him instead. He could not think of a physical sensation less desirable than another human’s touch.
“If you don’t want to talk,” she said in a soft voice, “why not think of all the good things you remember about him?”
David couldn’t remember a single good thing about his father. He could only recall the pointless rules and structure the man lived by, the exacting principles he enforced, and the eventual betrayal of said principles.
“Try to imagine the ways he shaped you,” Meredith whispered. “Good or bad, we all eventually resemble our parents.”
That made David think of the time he had betrayed his best friend. When he had, for no good reason, kissed Jonathan Crane’s girlfriend. He could see that day clearly, could picture himself riding a bicycle in slow motion, pedaling down Shady Lane toward some unknown destination.
Except when he finally saw her silhouette in the front yard, pulling weeds with her mom, David was forced to admit he had sought her out on purpose.
Alicia approached him across the lawn, wearing a light blue T-shirt that didn’t quite reach her pink shorts. Her skin was brown and shiny with sweat, and he could see her bellybutton. She was wearing sunglasses and pink jelly shoes. Soundtrack music played in the background.
I can see your brown skin shining in the sun, you got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby . . .
Meredith was still whispering to him, soothing him, but her voice was becoming lost in the dissonant sounds of his past. Now David saw the house on Driftwood, first during their afternoon rampage and later the night of the fire. Todd’s control over them had been considerable. At times he had seemed more adult than child. Then Joe Henreid had appeared, his eyes floating like orbs in the smoke, and they had fled. They had left him for dead.
I never will forget those nights, I wonder if it was a dream . . .
He knew it wasn’t a dream, he knew what had happened was real. And the consequences of his actions then had extracted a price from him now, twenty-five years later. Maybe he had fallen out of love with his father, maybe he was glad the old man had been put out of his misery, but even so his murder would require a response. At the very least it would compel David to visit his hometown and clean up whatever mess Fred Clark had left behind. But there was also the chance that his father’s death was only the first event in a much larger unfolding of truth, that David’s return to Wichita Falls would force him to confront that which he had fled to forget.
If he understood what made him different than everyone else, could David finally get busy living his life? Because now, despite every advantage he enjoyed, despite all his worldly possessions, something was holding him back. Something unresolved.
Was this a new beginning rushing toward him, or the end?
11
Everything had been wrong since the moment Jonathan Crane opened his eyes this morning.
He’d come starkly awake a few minutes before six from a terrible nightmare, and as he lay there waiting for his alarm to go off, sweating in the sheets, Jonathan tried to remember what had been wrong in his dream. There had been a lake, large and calm and completely empty of human concerns. Near this lake stood a neighborhood of deserted houses where Jonathan had been searching for someone who wasn’t there. And while he saw all this, a song had been playing in the background, music he had been hearing in his dreams for years, though he could not remember which song it was.
On the way to school, driving down Southwest Parkway, Jonathan looked around and realized he’d seen this street in his dream. Just before the light at Kemp he spotted the entrance to a neighborhood that he also recognized from the night before. He’d searched that neighborhood for someone, though he wasn’t sure who, and beyond that, barely a mile away, was the northern shore of Lake Wichita.
Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone. I’m driving by your house, but I know you’re not home . . .
The tune in question was Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.” He had dreamed, basically, the song lyrics themselves. The reason he knew this was, many years ago, Jonathan and his friends had been part of a club that took its name from the song. That was the year they’d all met Todd Willis, the year Jonathan had fallen in love with Alicia Ulbrecht, a summer that had been consumed by fires and betrayal and the disappearance of an eleven-year-old kid named Joe Henreid.
Today, Jonathan was thirty-eight years old and taught eighth grade social studies at McNiel, a junior high school at the southwest corner of town. In 1979 McNiel had earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first structure hit by the terrible tornado that had changed the city (and his own life) forever. The school had been obliterated by the storm, and eventually rebuilt, but none of Jonathan’s students seemed to know that or care. As they neared the end of their formal education’s eighth year, he’d hoped to impart upon them a curiosity for history, but so far he’d found little success. They were fourteen years old, after all. George W. Bush was the only president they’d ever really known, and even the terror attacks of September 11th were historical. Any year that began with a “1” was positively ancient.
Relating history to them personally didn’t help, either. When Jonathan told his students how his own father had died during the tornado, how the old man had been torn from their house and dropped near a road three miles away, they seemed bemused he’d ever known a father at all. As if they believed Jonathan had arrived on Earth as a full-grown adult, a man with no prior history and no purpose other than to deprive them of adolescent freedom.
All day he thought about the dream. Everything was masked by a film of wrongness, a dread he couldn’t shake. By sixth period, the last of the day, Jonathan was mentally spent and eager to enjoy a few drinks and dinner. Typically he would devote the balance of his evening to progress on his newest novel (this one was called The End of the World ) but he doubted there would be energy left tonight for that.
“In the textbook,” he said to the class, “you’ll find a quote about history commonly attributed to the philosopher George Santayana. Can anyone tell me what it is?”
Sixth period students were both the most energetic and least engaged of the day, agitating with the knowledge of their impending freedom. Of the twenty-seven pairs of eyes before him, only half were even looking in Jonathan’s direction. The rest were staring down at the textbook or at someone else in class or out the window. At this point in the day, less than ten minutes from the final bell, Jonathan could hardly blame them.
“Is there any chance someone here read yesterday’s assigned chapter? Even one person?”
A forest of hands reached into the air.
“Then surely one of you can remember the quote. Or perhaps source it from the textbook?”
“I know it,” said Brooklyn Keeley. Far and away the most dedicated student in sixth period, she answered roughly half the questions Jonathan posed to the class.
&
nbsp; “Brooklyn. Of course. Let’s hear it.”
“‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’” she said with girlish authority.
“That’s great. And can you tell us what you think Santayana meant by that?”
“He meant,” said a voice from the back of the room, a male voice belonging to Blake Cannon, “if you fail history you don’t get to play football anymore!”
Blake was a big-boned tailback already being drooled over by the high school football coaches. He was popular among the students and most everything he said in class generated laughter, including this.
“George Santayana wasn’t much of a sportsman,” Jonathan said. “But thank you for the contribution, Blake.”
“Totally!”
As the laughter continued, another hand went up. This one belonged to Jonathan’s newest student, Thomas Phillips. Thomas had come to McNiel a few weeks ago, which was curious timing considering how little of the school year remained. He was also vaguely familiar looking. Jonathan had made a few attempts to engage Thomas in conversation, hoping to understand what had brought him to McNiel so suddenly, but the kid was as sharp as he was quiet.
“Yes, Thomas?”
“The quote means, if you don’t understand why certain things in the past happened, you’re likely to make similar mistakes in the future.”
“Excellent,” Jonathan said. “It’s nice to know at least one of you completed and understood the assigned reading.”
“Thank you. But I don’t think I agree with the quote.”
“No? What makes you say that?”
“Well, everyone has to take history to get a degree in college, right? So why do the same mistakes keep happening over and over? We had this whole Iraq war that seems just like Vietnam. Some of the generals in the Army probably even fought in Vietnam, but we started another dumb war anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter how much history people learn because they do stupid stuff even when they know it’s a bad idea.”
“That’s very insightful,” Jonathan replied. “Have your parents taught you about Vietnam? I know it’s not included in our curriculum here at McNiel.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Thomas explained. “Stupid stuff happens right here in Wichita Falls, too. You know the restaurant that was torched last night? Apparently the same place burned down like twenty-five years ago, and both times the fires were set on purpose. It’s like the world is on some kind of loop. You see what I mean?”
Jonathan didn’t see at all what Thomas meant. He couldn’t see anything, because the disquiet he’d felt all day, the sense of dread that had lurked out of sight, now filled his entire field of vision.
“What restaurant?” he asked, though he had a feeling he already knew.
“Lone Star Barbecue,” said Thomas. “It was all over the news this morning. Some guy named Bobby Steele did it. He used to be a high school football star and now he’s dead.”
Jonathan wondered if someone had turned up the heat. The classroom seemed thirty degrees warmer than it had just moments ago. When he looked at the clock, he saw there were less than three minutes to go until the final bell. But he wasn’t sure he could hold it together for another three seconds, let alone minutes. How could Bobby be gone just like that? And why burn down the restaurant? Again?
“Mr. Crane,” Thomas said. “The news said this guy was thirty-nine years old. Isn’t that about the same age as you?”
“Pretty close, yeah.”
Now there were two minutes to the final bell.
“So did you know him? Did you guys grow up together?”
Jonathan didn’t see any reason why he should lie to the kid (and the entire class, let’s not forget), but he lied, anyway. And was sure every student could see right through him.
“I sort of knew him. Everyone did. Like you said, he was the star quarterback when we were in high school.”
Jonathan saw fire rising, a swirling vortex. He smelled smoke. The five of them gathered in a circle while Todd explained to them about the end of the world.
“You guys weren’t friends before that?” asked Thomas. “My mom told me once about this kid who woke up from a long coma—”
“It was a long time ago, son. I’m not sure.”
One minute till the final bell. All twenty-seven pairs of eyes were looking at him now. The classroom was so silent that Jonathan thought he could hear the clock ticking off each one of the remaining seconds.
“Isn’t he the one who burned down the restaurant back then? Todd Willis?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Thomas.”
Even though no one spoke again after that, the sound of the final bell was so distant that Jonathan almost missed it.
“You can go,” he announced, his voice small and uncertain. “Have a good afternoon.”
Most of his colleagues at McNiel waged war with their students, but Jonathan had always been proud of his ability to maneuver past the raging hormones and budding rebellion to gain their trust. As sixth period filed out the door, however, he could sense new distance and discomfort that he didn’t care for at all. And how the hell had Thomas known anything about Jonathan’s relationship with Bobby? Or the first restaurant fire, which predated his birth by twelve years?
As adults, Bobby and Jonathan had drifted away from each other, perhaps because they’d never had much in common, or maybe because they were both baffled by the ongoing relationship between their remaining parents. Carolyn Crane and Kenny Steele had lived together, off and on, for almost twenty-five years, which meant their two sons had grown up in an unconventional fraternal arrangement. Not actual brothers, not really friends, they awkwardly occupied space together until high school graduation and then saw a little less of each other until their contact ended for good two years ago. Now that Bobby was dead (if he really was dead), Jonathan wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel.
The timing of it all was even more confounding. He’d learned the news about Bobby only a few minutes ago, but this morning’s strange dream had occurred hours before that. And it was impossible not to see a connection between the two events. Maybe he had overheard the news about Bobby in some kind of unconscious way, maybe while watching television last night, but Jonathan was pretty sure he wouldn’t have missed any kind of news like that. And being the pragmatic person he was, a man who regarded the fantastic with a high degree of skepticism, how was he supposed to accept a dream that seemed to anticipate what Bobby had done?
When he arrived home, Jonathan stopped first at the mailbox and discovered a large, familiar envelope folded into it. The delivery address had been written in his own handwriting, the postage also paid by him. On a day that was already raining shit, it was no surprise to find more bad news: Another literary agent had rejected his manuscript.
In the kitchen, before he found the bottle of Jameson, Jonathan read a letter included in the envelope:
Dear Mr. Crane:
I appreciate the opportunity to review sample chapters of your novel, THE END OF THE WORLD, but after careful consideration, I feel this project would be difficult to place in today’s painfully discriminating fiction market. I’m sorry I won’t be able to work with you further.
Later in the letter, the agent shared a few personal thoughts about Jonathan’s work, comments like Normal people with dull lives thrust into extraordinary circumstances—your story brings nothing new to this unimaginative and weary plot device, and Perhaps you have interpreted the adage “Write what you know” too literally. On a typical day this sort of rejection might have rattled him, since The End of the World was his third (and best) novel, and it was being ignored by New York just as the other two had been. But today there was finally a more pressing issue at hand.
He poured a few ounces of Jameson over ice and went into his office. While he waited for his computer to come to life, Jonathan tried to recall fond images of Bobby and him together, but somehow the only memories he could recall were awful ones from the su
mmer when Todd had joined their club. Like the five of them together at the fort, or inside the house on Driftwood, or standing outside the same house late at night while it was consumed by flames. Where they had left Joe Henreid to die.
In the Google search field he typed Bobby Steele and Lone Star Barbecue, and the first result, from Channel 6, confirmed what Thomas had told him in class and revealed news even more horrifying: Bobby had been killed by a responding police officer after allegedly murdering the owner of the restaurant, Fred Clark. The fire Bobby set had destroyed the restaurant and burned the dead bodies beyond recognition.
“Oh, God,” Jonathan murmured. “Bobby, why?”
He sucked down the rest of the Jameson and went to make another, bigger drink. Until now he had clung to the possibility that Thomas was incorrect or had fabricated his story completely, but it was obvious the events were even worse than Jonathan had feared. It seemed impossible that Bobby would have murdered David’s dad, but who could say what the guy had been thinking? Something terrible had happened at the restaurant when they were kids, something that had been eating at the fringes of Jonathan’s consciousness for years, and maybe he wasn’t alone.
His head was beginning to swim a little now. He took the Jameson back into his office and sat down in front of his computer. Instead of The End of the World, which he couldn’t bear looking at this evening, Jonathan opened a new file and begin to type.
The five of them stood in a rough circle between three barbecue pits. It was a little after two o’clock in the morning, and the city was asleep.
Todd smiled dreamily, his eyes far away, as if he were enjoying a movie only he could see.
“Tell me again,” Adam complained. “Why do you want to burn down your own dad’s restaurant?”
Why, exactly, had they burned it down? David had been angry with his father, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to torch the man’s business. No, the real reason was related to Todd’s secret, which he had shared with them just before the first match was lit. Jonathan couldn’t remember the secret, not consciously, but he felt sure he would understand what was wrong with the world if he could just—