by Richard Cox
“And then it goes on to the next verse,” Todd said. “But I don’t have any more than that yet.”
The only person or persons who could have executed a fraud like this were Jonathan and David. Jonathan for access to his personal belongings, and David because he possessed the financial means to achieve a quality result.
But the obvious question for which Alicia had no answer was: Why?
“Holy shit,” young Jonathan said. “That was really good.”
34
When David had remembered this event on the plane, Todd performing “The Boys of Summer” for them, it had been possible he was remembering it wrong. Even when Gholson had informed him of the mysterious emails that seemed to reference their childhood club, David could still pretend the whole situation was an unlikely coincidence. But now that Jonathan had produced the tape, there were no more doubts about the reality of the song.
Todd Willis had been connected in some way to a time that hadn’t yet occurred.
Once you accepted the reality of the music, some questions naturally followed: How did it physically happen? And why? The first thing anyone might point to was Todd’s head injury, because wasn’t it always like that in movies, where some dude gets into a car accident, slips into a coma for five years, and comes out on the other side in possession of extraordinary mental gifts?
But David had not sustained any head injury. He’d never broken a bone or even pulled a muscle. And yet it seemed obvious that his proclivity for extraordinary financial decisions was either similar or identical to Todd’s ability to hear music from another time. There was no other way to interpret the situation. The main difference between them was David had turned his ability into a financial empire, and Todd had disappeared into oblivion.
Meredith said, “Is there any chance the tape was recorded after the time you guys think it was?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alicia said. “The tape could have been edited. With a computer and the right software, a person could fake something like this.” She looked at Jonathan. “Right?”
Alicia seemed like an intelligent woman, and she’d kept her body in fantastic shape. If Meredith and Jonathan weren’t around, David might have fucked her. But good body or not, it was irritating for her to accuse them of intentionally editing the tape. As if he didn’t have better things to do with his time.
“You just saw me pull the cassettes from the bottom of a dusty box I took from the attic. I probably hadn’t looked at them in ten or fifteen years.”
“But I don’t know that,” Alicia said. “Neither does anyone else. How can we know for sure it’s real?”
“Alicia,” David said. “Why would we go to that kind of trouble to fool you? For what purpose?”
“I’m not saying you have,” she answered. “It could be true, what you guys are saying. All I’m saying is that this tape isn’t necessarily proof. And anyway, whether the music is real or not, we still aren’t any closer to understanding what’s going on.”
Jonathan started to say something, but Alicia continued.
“I mean, let’s be clear. David’s dad is dead. Bobby is dead. Someone is still out there sending emails to the cops, my insurance settlement is on hold, and—”
A crash interrupted her. An explosion of glass. A thud on the carpet. They all looked in the direction of the front door. “What was that?” Alicia said.
Jonathan jumped up and ran for the door. David followed him. There was another crash and then a third.
“Holy shit!” Jonathan yelled. “My office is on fire!”
The windows in the entryway were intact, but as David rounded a corner, he saw flickering yellow light in an adjacent room. He realized what had happened just as Jonathan emerged and reached for the front door.
“My computer!” he yelled. “Oh, shit!”
For a moment David couldn’t understand where Jonathan was going, but when he looked out the front door, he saw. There was a water hose out front.
Jonathan was already on his way back inside.
“Grab the hose, will you? Make sure it doesn’t get stuck on something!”
David stepped past Jonathan and reached for the hose, which indeed had already caught on the flowerbed edging. He freed it and fed more line to Jonathan.
“My computer!” he heard Jonathan yell. “My books!”
David was about to run back inside to help when he saw, through the front windows, more flickering light.
There were at least two other rooms on fire, and the acrid smell left no doubt about what had happened: Someone had thrown burning bottles of gasoline through the windows. Someone was trying to destroy Jonathan’s house.
He ran back toward the front door and into the house. Jonathan was in his office, still spraying the fire with water, but he didn’t seem to be having much luck.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that,” David said. “If it’s gasoline, I don’t think water will work.”
From the direction of the living room, Alicia came running.
“Jonathan! The whole house is on fire! We have to get out of here!”
“But I can’t! I’ll lose everything!”
“Jonathan!” Alicia cried. “Fire is coming down the hallway. I just called 9-1-1. We have to get outside!”
Meredith appeared and David pushed her toward the front door. He grabbed Alicia and pointed her in the same direction.
Jonathan didn’t seem to realize the water was having no effect on the fire. If anything, the flames were spreading. David put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.
“Come on, man. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“I can’t. I already lost my computer. Everything I’ve ever written is on that goddamned laptop.”
“The fire department will be here soon,” David said. “You can’t do anything at this point except get yourself hurt. Come on.”
Jonathan finally seemed to realize the futility of his efforts and shut off the water.
“Fuck!” he yelled.
David took Jonathan by the shoulders and pushed him toward the front door. As they walked outside, tires screeched on the street in front of them. A man jumped out of a blue Ford sedan and sprinted up the sidewalk. David realized it was Detective Gholson.
“What the hell happened?”
“My house is on fire!”
David looked and saw flames flickering in three windows. Black smoke poured out of them.
“I leave my post for five minutes,” Gholson said, “go take a piss and grab another cup of coffee, and now this? It’s just like the movies. Like the fucking Keystone Cops. I can’t believe it.”
Up and down the street, David saw homeowners standing on their lighted porches, looking toward Jonathan’s house. Meredith and Alicia stood beside him, shaking. Alicia in particular looked horrified.
“This is bad,” she said. Her voice was quiet and uncertain. “I don’t understand why this is happening to us.”
David didn’t understand it, either, but he was determined to find out.
“So you were watching my house?” Jonathan asked.
Gholson nodded. “I told you—”
“Did you see who did it?”
“No, I—”
“Do you still think it’s me? Do you think I would burn down my own house? Aren’t you going to do something?”
“I already called it in,” Gholson said. “Fire trucks will be here shortly.”
“But what about the person who did it? He was here. He stood in front of my house and threw bottles of gasoline through my windows.”
“I know,” Gholson said. “I’m sorry. But—”
“But you left for doughnuts. And meanwhile, the person who was watching you watch me used your laziness to set my house on fire.”
Alicia approached Jonathan and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Jonathan,” she said. “I know you’re upset. Believe me, I get it. But it’s not his fault.”
“Then whose is it?”
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“Look,” Gholson said. “You people are the victims, not the criminals. I realize this.”
“What gave you that idea?” Jonathan quipped.
“But you know something more than what you’re telling me. I can see it in your eyes. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
David could hear sirens approaching. It was almost dark and Jonathan’s house still burned and black smoke reached toward the sky. The scene unsurprisingly reminded David of the night they burned down the house on Driftwood.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Jonathan said. “But when I figure out who did this, he and I are going to have a little chat.”
35
Adam’s bedroom was dark and crowded with three-dimensional shadows—the locomotive bulk of the dresser, the rectangular chest of drawers, the skeleton framework of their stereo rack. The only sounds were atmospheric, like conditioned air moving through the house and his wife’s rhythmic breathing. The pillow-top mattress was a little too soft, the sateen sheets too slippery, the fitted sheet wasn’t fitted enough and thus a rippled mess beneath him, and Adam lay there damning the conspiracy of it all. Because you couldn’t will yourself to sleep. The more you concentrated on relaxing, the more remarkable and surreal it seemed that a person could move from a state of consciousness to unconsciousness. It was impossible to register the exact moment when you crossed that threshold, but that didn’t stop Adam from examining every moment on the way to the threshold, and this action, by its very nature, pushed the threshold farther away. Chasing sleep was a nightmare hallway that stretched longer the faster you ran.
Adam had refused to meet with Jonathan and David tonight, and now he wondered if he’d made the correct decision. Because they would have discussed the fires, especially who might be setting them. Maybe they believed Todd had returned to exact some kind of vengeance. Maybe they suspected Adam. Jonathan had asked weird questions on the phone, questions Adam had not wanted to hear, let alone answer. Jonathan had even asked about Joe Henreid.
He imagined he was standing in front of one of his new home sites where a foundation had just been poured. The concrete was a flat, rectangular shape with other, smaller rectangles jutting out in functional locations. Surrounding the slab was a plain of red dirt dotted here and there with mounds of soil that had been pushed aside. And then wind was suddenly pushing against him, blasting him with dirt, pounding him with debris. His sister lay motionless at his feet. Adam guessed he was dreaming when he noticed he was pushing a construction wheelbarrow that moments before had not been present. When he looked down he saw his dead sister lying in the carrier, her body folded at a weird angle, and he couldn’t believe he was looking at her again after all these years. Because in real life she was buried in a cemetery. He knew this because as a nine-year-old he had stood beside her grave, gaping at the hole where they were going to put her. He could not believe this girl, who only days before had been running up and down the hallway in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and red rain boots, was about to be lowered into the ground where she would remain forever. He would not look directly into the hole because something was moving down there. He could hear the dry scraping of hands on soil, the raspy cough of dirt being choked up. He refused to look because what he saw would surely make him sit up in the bed and scream, and if that happened he would never get back to sleep again.
36
The next morning Adam snoozed the radio alarm twice before finally climbing out of bed. He stumbled into the bathroom around 6:45, leaned into the shower, and turned it on. Waited a minute for the water to warm up and then stepped inside.
Something was on his feet. Something the water was trying to pry away. Adam looked down, and for a moment he thought he was dying. For a moment he thought he was bleeding to death. But it wasn’t blood streaming into the drain.
It was red dirt. Mud.
His feet were covered with it.
PART FIVE
June 14–18, 1983
ZONE FORECAST PRODUCT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORMAN OK
TXZ086-142200-
WICHITA-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF ... WICHITA FALLS
1114 AM CDT TUE JUN 14 1983
.TODAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH AROUND 107. WINDS SW 15-25 MPH AND GUSTY.
.TONIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW NEAR 80. SW WIND 10-15 MPH.
.WEDNESDAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH AROUND 109. SOUTH WINDS 20-30 MPH.
.WEDNESDAY NIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW IN THE LOW 80S. SOUTH WINDS AROUND 25 MPH.
.THURSDAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH NEAR 110.
.FRIDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH NEAR 112.
37
Jonathan was in his room with the door closed, a spiral notebook on the bed in front of him. He was listening to one of his father’s favorite cassettes, Bo Diddley, which had somehow survived the tornado’s wrath, and which lifted his mood whenever he played it. After a few minutes he picked up the pen and wrote a sentence, crossed it out, and wrote something else he sort of liked. This morning he had woken with a story idea ringing like a siren in his mind, where an injured writer (Paul) was held hostage by a terrible woman (Annie) who turned out to be his number one fan. He imagined Paul could not get out of bed, that for every physical need he depended on a woman who hated him as much as she loved him. For some reason this concept struck Jonathan as morbidly hilarious and he could not wait to see how the story would turn out.
Three days had passed already since he had been forbidden to contact Alicia. And if that had been the only barrier to cross—disobeying orders—Jonathan would already have ridden to her house by now. Unfortunately the bigger problem was admitting to Alicia that his mother was nuts, that if the two of them wanted to conduct a relationship it would have to be private. Maybe in a novel or movie it would seem romantic for two young lovers to fight for their feelings against insurmountable odds, but in the real world it was ridiculous and embarrassing that a 13-year-old kid couldn’t have a junior high girlfriend. Like they were really going to have sex. He didn’t even know how to have sex.
What hurt most of all was that his feelings for Alicia, desperate as they were, now had nowhere to go. Jonathan had long cultivated fantasies of them holding hands and talking about books and kissing each other on the lips. He’d been able to sustain such fantasies because it was possible, however unlikely, they might someday come true. But now that he’d blown his chance, now that he was unable to speak to her again, Jonathan could no longer delude himself. It hurt to think about her now. The pain was a physical thing, nearly unbearable.
The only thing that made him feel better was to shift his attention elsewhere, and this new story concept was perfect for that. At the moment he was writing an amusing scene where Annie was about to cut off one of Paul’s feet as punishment for trying to escape. She was just about to swing the axe when his mother’s voice interrupted him.
“Jonathan,” she called from across the house. “Hey, Jonathan. Come here.”
He found her in the kitchen, where she stood in front of the breakfast table. One of the chairs was pulled away from the table, and Jonathan wondered for a moment if she wanted him to sit.
“Yes?”
His mother smiled and said, “You and I have a lot of battles, don’t we?”
Jonathan didn’t know how to answer that. Battles, as far as he understood them, were fought among willing participants.
“Do you know why we have so many fights? Why I get on to you so much?”
He shook his head.
“Because of your lying. Ever since you were five years old, when you and Thomas spray-painted Mr. Donovan’s house, you’ve been lying to me. You can’t keep doing that, Jonathan. You just can’t.”
Blooms of dread opened in his stomach. His balls shrank against his body. His mother’s entire case for this supposed chronic dishonesty rested on a misunderstood crime committed against a neighbor who had once lived across the street. Jonathan hadn’t painted Mr. Donovan’s house. He had
simply watched his friend, Thomas, paint.
“I’m going to make it really easy for you this time,” she said. “I’ve done my homework, everything is all figured out, and all you have to do is tell me what I already know. I’m giving you the perfect opportunity to get us back on the right track. I don’t want to fight any more than you do. Really, I don’t.”
Jonathan might have found that funny if he hadn’t been so nervous.
His mother said, “I already asked Bobby if he did it, and he said ‘no.’ We know Kenny didn’t do it, either. I certainly didn’t do it, so that leaves you, Jonathan. It just leaves you.”
“What is it? What did I do?”
His mother pointed one of her sharp fingernails at the kitchen chair.
“There’s a hole in the Naugahyde. A little tear. You see it there?”
Jonathan looked. He could indeed see a split in the seat of the chair, about a half-inch long, as if someone had gashed it with a knife.
“I didn’t do that,” he said automatically.
His mother just stood there, staring at him, and he half-expected laser beams to shoot out of her eyes like Superman.
“I’m telling the truth. I didn’t cut this chair.”
His mother’s voice was calm, like the surface of a quiet pond, a pond in which a giant boy-eating monster lurked at the bottom.
“Jonathan, please. Please make this easy. I already know you did it. If you’ll just admit it, I promise I won’t get mad. I won’t tell Kenny about it, either. You know how he gets when I ask him to punish you. Tell the truth. Just this once. Admit you did it, and we’ll forget the whole thing. Okay?”
It was a dangerous dilemma. If she meant what she said, he might walk away from this skirmish unscathed. But could he really do it? Admit to something that wasn’t his fault? Was it better to tell the truth and encourage his mother’s ire, or lie to make her happy?
He thought about it a long time. He wavered back and forth for at least thirty seconds.