by Jeff Nesbit
Somehow Jude knew this. I didn’t ask how he knew this. As in all things, Jude just knew it. He’d learned this man’s secret and had chosen to take advantage of it.
Jude had, in some way, found a way into this man’s life and heart remotely, which was common for these sorts of affairs. But Jude had deliberately sought him out rather than the other way around.
He’d cultivated the knowledge for more than a year without telling me. There had been text messages, then illicit photos, and then, finally, phone calls. By the time the elderly physics professor had learned he’d been played and conned, it was far too late.
The professor had no choice. Jude had him very carefully, tightly, and thoroughly wrapped up in a nice, neat package. And when Jude delivered the ultimatum—to accept us, both of us, into his little family, the incredibly wealthy former professor, who likely had thousands upon thousands of pictures stored away on his various computers, as well as electronic trails that would betray his true life’s occupation, really had only one option.
The rules of engagement, in the end, were quite explicit and very clear. The man would leave us both alone—and Jude would, in turn, leave the elderly physics teacher to his own world and not reveal everything he knew to either the authorities or the business and financial world that had made him so very wealthy.
We took his last name, then, and became their adopted children. We would, at some point, inherit their vast wealth.
Knowledge is a curious thing. It holds a certain power. You can choose to do all sorts of things with that knowledge and with that power.
In the case of Professor Asher—who’d hungered for only one thing all his life, even as he’d amassed a fortune from a fortuitous discovery about the power of a single row of carbon atoms linked together—knowledge had never been a treasure stored up in his heart. It had been a burden.
But for Jude, once he’d unlocked this man’s closely held secret and then threatened to shine a very bright light on it for the world, knowledge was indeed quite powerful. For Jude, it was a key that unlocked a door to a world that neither of us had ever truly known about—the world of privilege and wealth and freedom to go and do whatever we wanted without fear of being “sent back.”
I must admit, I liked that freedom. I enjoyed it. I admired what Jude had done, even if I was simply not capable of the deed myself. I was glad he had found this guarded secret and had used it to give us a new life.
“It’s all different now,” Jude told me on our first day of school in our final year of high school. “We can do whatever we want. We will never have to do what others tell us, not ever again.”
I looked over at him from the passenger seat of the brand-new Mercedes Benz convertible that he now owned and which was carrying us to our first day of class.
“And you think this will last?” I asked. “He’ll just cut us out of his will the first chance he gets, you know. We can ride this for some time. But it won’t last. It can’t.”
Jude smiled that smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Once we turn eighteen, it won’t matter as much. We’ll have a legally binding trust. I’ve already arranged for that.”
“A legal trust?”
“A legal trust, with no possibility of harm coming to it,” he explained. “But there’s more to it than that. I’ve also found ways to make myself useful to our new adoptive father in ways he’d never imagined.”
“You don’t mean that you …?”
Jude laughed mirthlessly. “Good grief, no, not that,” he said, unable to keep the contempt from his voice. “He has no interest in me. Not now, not in that way. I’m far too old for him. I was able to keep my age a secret from him while we corresponded for those months. Once he found out how old I actually was, he recoiled. But it was too late. I knew everything that I needed to know about dear old dad-to-be by then.
“No, just as I’d deliberately sought him out, found him, and learned what truly interested him, so, too, can I help lead him to greener pastures than he’s ever known or experienced,” Jude continued. “There is a big, bold, awful world out there in the shadows and secret places, once you know where to look. I’m teaching him how to lift up heavy rocks and look behind closed doors that he’s never even known existed. He has much to thank me for, actually.”
I noticed then that Jude was gripping the steering wheel exceptionally hard. The blood had almost entirely drained from his fingers, which were wrapped around the expensive leather steering wheel of his new car. Jude may not have been able to articulate it, but I could see it.
He was angry—deeply, violently angry to his core. Jude knew what he was doing and was ruthless in his pursuit of what he wanted. But it didn’t take away the anger at having to do this thing, to justify this particular end with these means in order to achieve financial freedom.
I almost said something at that moment. I’d wanted to say something to him, about how each of us, in our own way, had to do whatever we needed to do to survive and find our way in a world that didn’t seem to care about our well-being.
I wanted to tell him that it was all right, that I was okay with what he was doing on our behalf, and that sometimes the end truly does justify the means.
I wanted to tell Jude that a person like Professor Asher never changed; that his own nature was so defined there was no turning back; that his own hidden life was one he’d chosen for himself and that it defined every single fiber of his being whether we liked it or not; and that we may as well profit from it.
But I didn’t. Because, whether I admitted it or not, I thought that Jude was wrong, and I couldn’t bring myself to think otherwise. I may have appreciated why Jude did what he did—and I may have been accepting of how that was now benefiting my own life—but I couldn’t force myself to accept it. It seemed wrong, somehow, to profit from this man’s carefully concealed secrets and pain.
“Don’t get caught,” I said instead. “Give me your word that you won’t do something that’s so out of bounds it follows us around like a black cloud.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Jude vowed. “We’re never anywhere near the carnage. You can rest easy on that point.”
It was then that I think I realized the awful decision Jude had made. In a world of suffering and pain that was not of his own choosing, my brother had decided to simply embrace the world as it was and to take from it everything that it had to offer in any way he so desired. He had not made the world he’d been born into—but he could certainly remake it as he saw fit.
Chapter Nine
When I was healthy and physically recovered from my gunshot wound, I chose not to go back to work at the newspaper. At least not right away.
I gave up on the trip to the poor, warming Arctic Ocean that really should have been a harbinger to the world about what would happen to all of us within a generation or so if we continued to burn every last ounce of fossil fuels we extracted from the dark, deep corners of the planet. I would leave that story for another day when I was better able to tell it properly.
Someday, I vowed, I would more properly explain that unfettered, unrestricted corporate power built to unlock every source of energy on the planet would have unintended consequences for our human civilizations. I would do my best to explain what I’d learned from Jude over the years—namely, that human beings, if left unchecked, would take and take and take from the earth until they’d consumed everything within their grasp, leaving behind a husk devoid of value.
But not now. I needed to get my head clear of what had just happened. As much as I tried to understand it, the whole thing kept replaying in my mind with no suitable explanation. It made no sense.
Was it possible that Jude could have not known what was happening that day in the shadows of the new World Trade tower that had risen up majestically to replace the fallen Twin Towers? Was that truly possible, given what he’d learned from the regents and his fiancée? What was Jude n
ot telling me?
I’d always assumed that Jude had controlled those largely unseen principalities and powers that he’d called on from a very early age. After all, he’d managed to demonstrate quite a degree of control. From the very first moments when I’d watched Jude exert his own will through these unseen forces, I’d witnessed a certain level of mastery. They seemed to bend to his will without question. I’d never seen anything happen that Jude had not either foretold or planned.
Until the public square. I’d seen the anger, hate, and venom in that attacker’s eyes. It had clearly been aimed in Jude’s direction until I’d gotten in the way. But how was that possible? How? It made no sense—unless Jude was right that there were forces in that unseen world that he was still trying to understand and master.
I’d never read the Bible. I doubted I ever would. But I often heard stories that must have had their origins somewhere in the pages of that unusual collection that told of humankind’s interaction with an all-knowing, omniscient God who ruled everything in His creation and loved each and every human unconditionally.
Stories about how you should love your enemies or treat others as you would yourself or feed the hungry and the poor—they’d almost certainly had their origins somewhere in the Bible. But I had no interest in searching out those stories or their meanings. I had Jude as my guide, from an entirely different vantage point.
Jude was quite clear about what the world meant. It was a place full of humans who were entirely self-obsessed. Each and every person struggled with daily existence, Jude believed, and strove to master small and great challenges alike on an entirely personal and self-centered basis.
Helping others was a luxury very few could afford. And those who did help others nearly always had plenty left over for themselves. Very, very few were utterly possessionless and willing to give all they had in both material and spiritual service to their brothers and sisters. That sort of selflessness, Jude believed, simply did not exist in the world.
For this reason, he always said, each and every human being on the planet was free to act in his or her own self-interest. Actually, it was more than that. Each one of us was required to act in our own self-interest, Jude believed, or risk being destroyed by others with stronger wills, more resources, and greater control of the natural environment. The strong survive. The weak fail. It really was as simple as that, Jude believed.
I had a difficult time disbelieving this worldview. In my own limited capacity, most people did go through their daily lives with blinders on that forced them to take actions and steps mostly benefitting themselves. Rules and laws kept people from veering into other’s lanes, but I wasn’t convinced that anything outside those physical rules and laws had much effect on people’s mostly selfish actions.
Which was why I was so troubled by what had happened in the public square. It turned out that Samuel Chambers—the “policeman” who’d attacked Jude—was, in fact, a member of a group called the Christian Brigades, which now had unofficial chapters in several states in the American West. It was classified as an extremist hate group by domestic terrorism standards.
I wasn’t all that troubled by the fact that there was a Christian Brigades. Such groups in America were hardly novel. From the John Birch Society on the far right to the Black Panthers on the far left, throughout history extremist groups had always grown at the edges of American society. Their fuel was hate, and their targets were those in authority. Groups like the Christian Brigades attracted people who believed that hate, bile, and venom were acceptable forms of human interaction.
You could nearly always see this in full display in the brave new world of instant media. Every story in every form of media always attracted commenters, and haters invariably came to dominate long comment threads. Expressing hatred toward those with whom we disagree seems to be a part of human existence.
No, what bothered me about the attack in the public square was that they’d selected Jude as the focus of their attack. Assassins targeted sitting presidents and elected officials, not mere candidates. It didn’t make much sense to me—and, I knew, it perplexed my brother as well.
We both knew unseen forces were fully capable of channeling and directing hate and rage in certain directions. But this attacker, who had now been thoroughly debriefed by Homeland Security, had apparently acted on his own. His reasons for attacking were incoherent. He was clearly mentally unstable. He had no real motive, other than a likely objection to Jude as a member of the ruling order.
So it turned out Jude was no longer an innocent victim of an uncaring world. Now, at least to this particular person who’d chosen to sacrifice himself on the altar of violent infamy, Jude was a card-carrying member of the ruling order that controlled the lives of the lesser people of the earth. It was all very curious.
There was one person, however, who didn’t seem to be bothered by all of this. In fact, Sandy was pleased by the unexpected turn of events. For, just as I was about to walk off the boyfriend cliff and burn yet another budding relationship with a member of the opposite sex, I’d suddenly come to my senses and stopped at the edge.
Sandy had come by to see me in the hospital after I’d been shot. She’d seen the horrific event on the news, of course, but had been unsure about whether I’d even want to see her again. When she’d walked through the entrance of my hospital room, I’d never been so glad to see another human being in my life—and I’d told her as much.
We went on our vacation together after all.
“So can we stay here forever?” I asked her the first day we were there.
Sandy lifted her head from the canvas deck chair she’d dragged out from the pool area at our Caribbean resort hotel. We’d planted ourselves right at the edge of the ocean, close enough to enjoy the gentle waves lapping against our feet, which dangled over the edges of the long chairs.
She squinted at me through the sun’s welcoming, hot glare. “Seriously? You’d be okay with that? Just hang here, lying out in the sun, with no ambition beyond what we’re going to have for dinner tonight?”
“My dear,” I said casually, “I can think of nothing even remotely better than that right now. This is precisely what I’d like to do, and I would very much like for it to last as long as it possibly can. If I never return to work, I very well might be a happy man.”
Sandy laughed. I could tell from the sound that it was real. She was genuinely happy with the turn of events in our lives. It might be some time before she’d trust me or my motives, but she was happy right now, at this moment. There was something to be said for that.
“You are such a silly man,” she said. “Who knew that someone would need to shoot you in order to bring you to your senses?”
I grinned. “Oh, I’m not sure about bringing me to my senses. It’s just that I never knew how delightful it could be to just do nothing for hours and hours on end. No cares, no worries, no meetings or phone calls to make, no people I’m forced to listen to or even care about. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.”
Sandy playfully nudged my toes. “It’s called a vacation. Most people look forward to moments such as this, where they can relax and push the cares of the world off to the side for a bit.”
“Well, I like it!” I declared. “So I vote that we stay here, just like this, for as long as we possibly can. I can have someone build a big cabana over us, right here on the beach. We’ll have our meals delivered to us.”
“And when you get bored? What then?”
“I won’t,” I vowed. “I have you to talk to. Conversation will carry us through each and every day.”
“Sure.” She chuckled. “That’ll work. It will get us through one day, max. Then you’ll find a convenient reason to wander off in search of a newspaper. You’ll find a TV somewhere so you can catch up on what’s happening in the world. Then you’ll call your editor or one of your sources. You’ll buy a laptop and start composing posts for the
newspaper’s blog pages. Then you’ll—”
“Enough!” I threw my hands up toward the sky. “I get it. So this can’t last forever. But can we at least enjoy this for a day? Right now? Can we commit ourselves to that? Can we promise that we’ll allow this moment of doing nothing beyond merely existing on the surface of the planet to last for however long it’s going to last? Can we do that?”
“We can, Thomas,” she said gently. “And what’s more, I will thoroughly enjoy every moment with you in that. It’s all I’ve ever asked of you—and nothing more.”
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t committing to Sandy beyond this pause in time. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand myself right now, much less another human being.
But I also knew I was happy she was at my side. I was happy to have a companion. Because, for now, the world seemed better with someone beside me who seemed capable of unconditional love.
Chapter Ten
Jude and I, once inseparable, grew apart some in college. It wasn’t deliberate on my part—it was mostly just geography and time. I just had better things to do, and so did he.
Most kids who arrive at college, parents in tow, full of hope and tears and joy at the promise of intellectual and physical freedom from the confines of family, very quickly fall into patterns and social cliques. Some join fraternities and sororities their first year if they’re on campus. Others take up intramurals or hang out and talk about Plato’s Cave until all hours of night in dorm commons or volunteer for various social causes.
I did none of those.
I was already free. I had no parents to speak of, beyond dear old Professor Asher and his hapless social companion. I was financially independent and truly had no real need to attend college to get a degree. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was even bothering.
“Go to college. It’ll kill time, and there’s no reason not to,” Jude had ordered somewhere around Christmas our last year in high school. “You’re not Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg—not yet, at least. You can always drop out of college when you’d like and pretend that you’re like them.”