by Lee Thompson
And every year, around that same week when the days grew a bit shorter and the leaves changed, he stalked another girl who reminded him of his first, and he took her off some place where they could be alone…
She ran a finger under her nose and wished more than ever that they weren’t going to some small cabin in the woods where he was keeping Robin Stark. Yet she knew that he was stronger than her and she would have to pretend to be even weaker and more afraid than she was until she had a chance to club him with something.
“Relax,” he said, glancing from the road, to her, and then back to the road. “I’m not going to hurt you, Nina. But you have to be calm, okay? Don’t do anything stupid like that again. We both have enough stress as it is.”
He smiled faintly and it twisted her stomach. It was hard for her to accept that she once thought that smile the most beautiful one she’d ever seen.
8
After watching Officer Friendly gun down Victor, as Jacob had driven away in the Lincoln, he’d seen the cop leaning over Victor and rifling through his pockets in the rearview mirror.
He drove instinctually, without thought, without even seeing where he was going. A cloud of disbelief and denial hovered just inches before his eyes and he cursed repeatedly, wishing he could regain control of his limbs and yet unable to prevent or even subdue their shivering.
It was shock, he knew, and it was going to last until he stopped moving and the weight of what he’d just seen sank in. And it would, like it had with Victor’s sister. Sebastian would have loved to take credit for Victor’s demise too, Jacob was certain. He was even more certain that his heroism earlier that day, when defending the two stunned black men from the skinny, strange white guy, had all happened in his head. Where had that heroism been as Victor bled out on a scorched asphalt parking lot with his assailant standing over him? He shouldn’t have run, he knew, Friendly could not have gotten away with killing both of them, and Jacob would have had the opportunity to tell his side of the story, and shared how it had really gone down. He was convinced someone like that cop, who was willing to kill over a beating, would have been reprimanded before for past physical violence. But at the time, in O’Toole’s parking lot, it had been fight or flight, and his body had fled while he drifted inside it like a prisoner.
As he drove, he expected to see flashing lights behind him at any moment, a cruiser, or two, or three, barreling closer while high above a police chopper tracked his progress.
But there was none of that, and he doubted Friendly even called for backup, because he had chanced upon them and he had taken the only moment he might ever have to just point and shoot, using that age old device every cop who has a score to settle and enough hate and shame in their hearts to make their dark fantasy a reality. Jacob was sure that when Friendly was leaning over Victor’s corpse that he was planting a pistol in his hand, or on the ground near him.
Jacob turned down a street that looked somewhat familiar.
For the last ten minutes he had felt lost, and thought he had no clue where he was going, but a minute later he passed Santana’s childhood home and turned around in a driveway a few houses past. The only bit of luck he felt he had after checking the garage door was that it was an older model that didn’t require a motorized opener, and it was still on the tracks and lifted easily. He pulled the Lincoln inside, slid the keys into his pocket, and went outside and shut the garage door, not sure what to do other than to hide inside the house and hope that the police didn’t find him.
He shook his head again in disbelief, but there was anger there too, now that he was standing and not fleeing, feeling such a strange sense of loss since Victor wasn’t standing there with him, and never would be again.
He thought, I need to chill out, watch the local news when it’s on in a couple hours and just… find out. Maybe the cop didn’t kill him, maybe he’s being tossed in an ambulance this very second and he’ll survive…
It was a long shot. Officer Friendly wouldn’t have let Victor survive to tell his side of the story, which made Jacob even angrier as he opened the front door and closed it behind him softly, flipping the lock, thinking that Friendly could not let Jacob share his side of the story either. And he knew that if he called the police to tell them what really happened his chances were slim they’d believe him over one of their own. Movies had taught him that, along with watching politics, which truthfully, had always sickened and disgusted him.
He went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer and drank it quickly but it didn’t calm him like he’d hoped. It felt as if his bones were rattling in every joint and he feared he might puke. He rubbed his temples and then grabbed another beer and carried it into the living room and drew the shades closed to a crack where he could still see outside but it would be difficult for anyone to see inside.
He wondered how many of the old neighbors had watched him come into the house. He still had Victor’s blood on his pant leg and on his right hand. In the bathroom he washed his hands and then used a damp washcloth to blot his pant leg. When he looked back into the mirror he had to look away quickly.
Jacob thought, What am I going to do?
Stick to the plan, he realized. Confirm if Victor is dead.
He was certain a police officer shooting someone would be on the news even if the reporter didn’t release Victor’s name or the fabricated details of their confrontation. But he hoped they’d have a few words with Friendly. Jacob wanted to hear what he had to say about the whole ordeal, suspecting the man would try to play the modest hero, protecting his town from a gun-toting maniac from New York, a thug who had ties to a family like only a few other infamous families.
Jacob thought, No matter what that cop is going to be a hero in everybody’s eyes.
He couldn’t accept that. It turned his stomach and he felt bile rise in his throat, still felt Victor’s blood on his hand although he’d just washed it off. Yet he knew that he was responsible for Victor’s death because the big ox would have never come looking for him if Jacob hadn’t fled Manhattan… Enough, he thought, fighting the spiral of guilt he felt himself being pulled into. And he struggled with a back and forth of his own culpability.
He sat in the living room for a while, just drinking, feeling the slight weight of Santana’s ashes in the pocket of his hoodie. He stroked the bag with his fingers and laid back and closed his eyes for a second, unable to fight his tears.
He didn’t know how to go on, and he didn’t know how to let go.
His parents and his extended family and his friends had never been much better at it. But he knew it was simple, it was nothing more than common sense. He had to act. He had to go to the garage and find a shovel, and if there wasn’t one there, he had to check the back yard for a small shed for a shovel there and he had to dig a hole and he had to put her ashes in that hole and then cover it, bury her and their son, and find the strength to walk away.
I can’t, he thought. I can’t let them go.
And he heard Victor’s voice in his head, saying only hours ago: She’s gone, bud. There’s nothing we can do to get her back.
He pushed himself up and took a deep breath and checked the garage. There were shelves along one wall, large white boxes full of Christmas lights, another full of old books, and another crammed full of VHS tapes. He approached the box of video tapes and reached out tentatively and when his fingertips connected with it, there seemed to be an electric charge exchanged between him and the cardboard.
Static electricity, he thought, until he glimpsed Santana’s name, written in black marker, on a white label stuck to the spine of the top video tape.
He grabbed the box and jerked it off the shelf and set it on the floor. It was full of home videos and the majority of them had her name on them followed by a date written in a scrawling script and the words: Track Meet, and another: Birthday, and another: Accident, and another: Graduation.
He picked up the box and carried it into the house, his heart breaking because he knew that Victo
r had been right about that too: Santana hadn’t told him whatever her accident was, and Victor didn’t want to but was going to before he’d been murdered, but she hadn’t wanted him to know, more than likely she simply wanted to forget.
Jacob set the box on the coffee table and hesitated.
These videos, he reasoned, were in a way like her journals and he had no right to pry…
Yet he also reasoned that he wouldn’t feel like such a trespasser if he simply avoided the tape labeled “Accident” and instead watched one of her birthday videos. He found one, based on the date, to have taken place on her fifteenth birthday.
He pushed it into the VCR and turned on the television, adjusted the channel, and then hit play.
Santana popped onto the screen. She was still slightly chunky, or at least appeared so since her bone structure was so small. She sat at a picnic table in the backyard and talked to someone off-screen, saying, “Nobody could ever hurt you.”
Her mother, holding the camera said, “Look at me, not him.”
Santana turned her head to her mother with a baleful look in her eye that she’d never shown Jacob, and she said to her mother, “Why don’t you ever tape Victor?”
Her mother set the camera on the edge of a table, and said, “I’m done.”
Jacob heard Victor’s young voice say off-screen. “Don’t ruin her birthday. I don’t want to be filmed anyway.”
Then the screen went black for a moment.
When it came back on it showed a picture of the back yard. Jacob could hear Santana’s voice as she held the camera and pointed the lens at Victor. He was about twenty and already an intimidating force, but he appeared shy, nearly blushing, trying to look away as she said, “Victor, stop. There’s nothing wrong with being videotaped. Okay?”
He nodded, half-turned away, but refused to look at her. She tried to coax him, saying, “You’re not ugly, Victor. You’re rugged. Like John Wayne.”
Victor said, “John Wayne?”
“Sure,” she said. “And you know how weak people feel threated by John Wayne. It’s because they see he’s this force, and they’re not really much of anything. And they see that he stands for something, that he has principles, and they realize that they don’t. It makes them feel hollowed out. Sometimes somebody is really beautiful and that’s all they have, and when they have a baby that isn’t as beautiful as they are, that is different than them, or ugly to them, they get scared because they think that looks are everything, and that somewhere inside them something ugly has always been hiding, and now they see it, and have to feed it, and have to hold it. And it’s not the baby’s fault, okay? It’s a weak, pitiful woman who is afraid of being anything but perfect, doing perfect things, having perfect children. It’s stupid.”
“You’re talking about Mom,” Victor said.
“Look at the camera,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He looked and Jacob’s heart felt like it was filling his entire rib cage.
There was such love for his sister in Victor’s eyes and it was mixed with so much trepidation, not only because he felt awkward about how he looked, but also because he didn’t want their mom to catch them and for her to take her anger out on Santana, and he said as much, but she replied, “I don’t care what she does to me, okay? But she needs to look at you and see how wonderful you are.”
“I’m not wonderful,” he said, but Jacob could hear the hope in his voice, that maybe in some way he was, and maybe he should trust his sister who had never lied to him, who, though she was five years younger than him, always seemed to look out after his mental well-being even as he protected her from assholes who only saw her blossoming physical beauty and wanted a piece of it for themselves, something to reflect upon when they were old and in a nursing home and the only thing they had to hold on to was the conquest of a young girl…
She laughed when he timidly stared into the camera and smiled.
He said, “What am I supposed to do?”
“Who says you have to do anything? Just let the world see you.”
“Is it okay if I give the world the bird?”
Santana laughed again. “Go for it.”
He stuck his middle finger up and made a face at the camera. Then he broke into laughter and she laughed again and called him nuts, and Jacob leaned forward on the couch, watching them from years ago, laughing with them, the tears growing hot on his cheeks.
But as much as it filled him with joy to see her and her brother loving each other the way he always thought siblings should—with an us-against-the-world mentality—he also felt exhausted and hopeless.
He got up and went to the kitchen and grabbed another drink. He could hear their voices still talking on the television as he leaned against the sink and noticed the two pistols that Victor had taken from Friendly and the female cop his first day down there.
He stared at them hard for a minute, his brow hurting, the alcohol tasting sour in his mouth. He thought to himself, That cop isn’t going to pay for what he did just like the terrorists who killed Santana and so many others will never pay. But I don’t have anything to live for anymore. Nothing.
He picked up one of the pistols and tucked it in the back of his waistband and looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 4:59 pm. He rubbed his eyes and went back into the living room and ejected the birthday tape and found the one that said “Accident.”
The gun against his tail bone dug into his flesh as he paused, leaning forward, feeling guilty for what felt like stealing a piece of his wife’s past. It felt like a monumental moment, a massive temptation. He didn’t know if her spirit lingered on earth, watching him, grieving or rejoicing for all she had known, whether pain or pleasure, and he hoped that if he watched the video she would understand why he must.
I must, he thought. I have to know. If it’s wrong, I’m sorry. I really am.
He pushed the tape into the player, hit the play button, and sat on the floor three feet from the television.
The television flickered. He thought: No, she would have told you if she’d wanted to.
He jumped up quickly, turned off the television and ejected the tape, thinking for a moment that he should destroy it, but he couldn’t, so he set it back on top of all the others.
9
Jacob found a spot close to a tree in the back yard, one he imagined Santana used to climb in as a child, and he dug a hole with his hands and pulled the bag of ashes from his pocket. It seemed to him that there should be some beautiful, lamenting eulogy he should recite, but he knew none, and he could barely think straight, let alone form sentences.
He set the bag in the hole and pushed the dirt over it with his hands.
He hung his head and whispered, “I miss you. I always will. You made life worth living more than anything I could ever do on my own, and more than anyone else could do for me. I miss you. And I’m sorry I didn’t bring you down here when you wanted because if I had you’d still be alive…”
His face grew hot and he hung his head and cried unabashedly, not caring in that moment who heard him. He pressed his forehead to the tiny, tiny grave, and shed his tears into the dirt, believing that somehow she could hear him.
When he went back inside he found a pair of scissors and a couple razors and shaved. He stood in the shower, letting the cold water pummel him for a while, until he couldn’t stand it any longer and had to shut the water off and climb out, shivering and naked, and he coughed, feeling as if a fever were overtaking him.
He dried off with an old towel and dressed in the clothes he’d washed and dried while watching the news naked on the couch. It had been as he figured. There was a short segment on recent tragedies: a local reporter died in a house fire; an unnamed man killed by a police officer at a local restaurant. Jacob shut off the television and said, “He’s dead. That cop killed him, over nothing but his wounded pride.”
It sounded insane, but he recalled how he and Victor had been attacked outside a bar and Victor had killed their assailan
ts, and the juggernaut had told him: Men will kill other men for a pair of shoes; they’ll kill someone for food, for their woman, for the sake of killing.
And he had been right.
Just because Friendly had a badge didn’t make him superior to anyone else.
Dressed now, and feeling like a different person since shaving and showering, he turned off the television and sat at on the couch and appraised the dark reflection staring back at him. The pistol rested on the coffee table close at hand. He thought of Victor and the videos. And he thought of Santana and how much she had loved her brother.
Jacob loved him too; he just hadn’t realized it until these last few days.
It had been so easy to judge him for so long, to have mixed feelings about him, but Victor had been a good person, a caring and protective one.
He stood and picked up the pistol and said, “There’s going to be some justice. That cop can’t kill you and not pay the consequences for that action. I refuse to let that happen.”
The words sounded ridiculous, of course, but he meant them, and he went out to the garage, and looking at the address Victor had given him just minutes before he died, he climbed into the Lincoln with the address burned into his memory. All he needed now was a map.
10
An hour later, at 8:13 pm, Jacob drove by the small farm house in Polk County, out in the country with nothing but fields and woods surrounding the houses tucked back in the hill country. It was nearing dusk and he was sweating and surprised to find that he didn’t care about the emptiness he felt, or the closure he was so willing now to embrace, even if it meant embracing his own death.