by Matt Shaner
The driver somehow pulled the truck into his driveway and parked it diagonally across the space. He opened the door, fell out of the cab, stumbled, and went into his house. He never looked back to us. I could hear sirens off in the distance and shivered at the sound. It pulled up some strong sense memory, and immediately I was back in the bedroom watching two people die. This time, the death would be of an innocent child..
I stayed back from Bryan and his son. Val rounded up the other boy and took him into our house. I guess Bryan’s wife did not hear the sirens or the accident. I could describe how he looked on the ground. His winter coat, originally green, had a growing dark area around where his neck started. I looked at the snow in the road and didn’t see any signs of brakes, and thinking about it now, I don’t remember hearing any before it happened. Those moments happen so fast and are so rare that sound itself suspends out of deference to the weight of the whole thing. The streetlight shined a small square of white light onto the boy’s jaw. It didn’t look right. It looked like a jaw, but the color was wrong, and it was out of position, bent into a diagonal line towards his ear.
A soft snow started to fall over us as I listened to Bryan weep. The ambulance arrived first. The two guys walked over and tried to pull Bryan off, but he never moved. We heard a yell behind us, and it was Julia running down the road. She slipped two or three times. When Bryan finally forced himself up, he ran to her, and they embraced. She tried to fight past him to get to the ambulance, and Bryan held her back. He put both hands on her face and turned it to look at his. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it was enough. She bent her head down and started to shake with sobs racking her body.
The police arrived next. Bryan and Julia gave their statements, and I stood outside waiting my turn. At that point, the cold and the snow didn’t matter. The ambulance moved on, and an area of red remained on the white road. I had another flashback to the sheets and pillow with its own red coating. Bryan and Julia drove behind the ambulance. Val told them we would watch their other son. She gave a statement to the police and went inside. I talked last.
The officer looked bulky in his winter gear as he walked over to me. He pulled out a pad. On his way over, another patrol car with lights on drove down the road and turned directly into The Holding. It drove all the way down to the last house and parked on the street. Two more officers stepped out and went to the door. When they went inside, the one with me put his radio back into his belt. I decided to beat him to the first step.
“He was drunk wasn’t he?”
“We’re testing the gentleman now sir. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
I told him about what I witnessed and noticed as we were talking that the two officers at the house in the distance brought the guy outside in handcuffs. There was no news vans or press coverage this time. Innocence lost creates much less media interest then a double murder. I pictured a small byline in the next day’s paper. I wasn’t wrong.
We finished up, and he walked to his car. Before he drove away, the other patrol car pulled in next to him. They talked for a minute then drove away, following each other back to the station. Silence fell over the night.
I kept standing in the yard, wishing for a rewind button or a reset button or something to take it all back. The snow still fell on my head. The same surreal glow draped over me from the moonlight. Val was watching me from the kitchen window. She had Bryan’s other son in her arms.
At this point, as I find myself doing in stressful situations, I started to take inventory. Travis chose his own path and it led to his downfall. Bryan didn’t choose any of this. A boy has no chance against a drunken truck driver. How fast was it going? The blur it created meant somewhere over fifty miles an hour at least. I think I imagined a sound. In reality it was something so quick and horrible that hopefully I will never experience it again.
I thought we would watch Bryan’s son until they came back from the hospital. He would tell me that everything was going to be okay. The driver would be put in jail. The victim would heal. Eventually, everything would get back to normal. I thought this land had to be on an Indian burial ground or something. The black cloud descended back over us. Still, with all this, I figured we were done. I was never more wrong.
Chapter Twelve
The Funeral
Bryan and Julia came home the next day. He called each of us that night and informed us that the damage was too much, and his son died in his sleep. He never woke up from the original accident. The funeral would be that weekend, two days later. He asked me to be a pallbearer.
A soft rain fell from the sky increasing and decreasing in a dismal routine that morning. Val and I arrived at the church and took our seats. The church was filled in the isles with Bryan and Julia sitting up in the front. A small wooden coffin sat directly in the center of the altar. A framed picture was on top of the casket.
The crowd was a mixed variety. A large amount of children were there who I assumed were his classmates. The pastor presided over an appropriate time of remembrance. A man spoke, thanking everyone for coming at this sad occasion. Bryan informed us later the man was an uncle. When everything ended, I took my place next to the casket.
Four of us carried it to the hearse, followed by Bryan and Julia. The rain increased, and the crowd became a spattering of umbrellas. We drove out to the cemetery in precession.
Funerals are so fast and surreal. We put an hour into the service and the cemetery, and that ended the existence of the young and innocent life. It was heavier than I thought it would be, carrying it to the tomb. The open hole in the ground draped with earth colored felt and edged by piping would hold the casket. Julia cried. Bryan cried. Their tears mixed in with the rain that picked up its intensity.
When everyone returned to their cars, I noticed Shawn and Drew standing next to each other at the edge of the crowd. Val was already in the car. I motioned to her where I was going, and she didn’t seem to care. I walked over to them. As I joined the pair, Bryan came over from the other side. We stood in a circle beneath the rain, just the newly filled grave and us.
“I’m sorry man,” Shawn said.
“Sorry won’t bring him back. I heard that word eighty nine thousand times today,” Bryan said. It was supposed to be forceful, but I didn’t think he possessed any more energy to be angry.
“If there is anything we can do, just say it,” Drew said.
“Did you read the newspaper this morning?” Bryan asked. I did. I wanted to turn this part off. We all looked at him.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want to hear,” I said.
“Probation. DUI and vehicular manslaughter, and all he gets is probation with community service,” Bryan said. The last word fell from his lips. The judge was too soft. The local court systems were too busy. The article found ten other reasons for this miscarriage of justice I found it ironic that they chose to use the phrase miscarriage to describe the death of a child.
“Well, sometimes . . .” Shawn started.
“Sometimes doesn’t bring him back either. Sorry doesn’t work. Sometimes doesn’t work. There aren’t any excuses for this kind of thing,” Bryan said. The death of a son could bring a father a large amount of wisdom. Centering happened quickly when you were staring at a fresh gravestone.
“It was a nice service,” Drew said.
We all nodded.
Bryan smiled. “I’ll talk to all of you later. Thanks again for coming.” He shook our hands then we each returned to our cars.
“How is he doing?” Val asked after I shut the door and brushed the rain from my coat.
“He’s surviving. He’s only a ghost today, but I wouldn’t expect anything more than that,” I said. We drove home talking about the funeral and wondering how we would go on if we lost a son. Bryan put a final rose on the ground before we left. I think that part of his soul stayed behind with h
is son.
Chapter Thirteen
A Bad Phone Call
That week really didn’t feel like a week. We all went to work. The children went to school. We could all feel a part of the loss. When you were part of a community, tragedy shook everyone, and this, with Travis and his situation, really gave the entire place a bad feeling.
When I say that everyone went back to normal, that’s not entirely true. Bryan never left the house. His car never moved from the driveway. The lights in Bryan’s windows, much like Travis and his house, never turned off. I asked around, and no one said they talked to him or even had a chance to see him. Julia, when she drove by, looked sullen, but who could blame her after their loss.
One night, as Val worked, and I sat on the couch working my way through a new book, the phone receiver rang next to me. I usually checked the caller ID before I picked up, but this time I felt impulsive and raised the receiver to my ear.
“Hello?”
“You need to come over.” It took me a second to register the voice. I realized it belonged to Bryan.
“Oh, Bryan, hey how’s it going?” I tried to lighten the tone.
“I have something you should see. Come on down. Please.” He stopped, and the line went dead.
I’d like to say that I felt something there, and that a grandiose sense of warning came over me, but it didn’t. Bryan was harmless. I threw on a jacket and walked out the door. The lights to his house were on. The front door stood open. I made my way inside. Bryan met me in the kitchen.
His look changed. He wore a shirt and jeans with a small spot of, what I hoped was, juice or something. His face held the start of a beard. His eyes were bloodshot. If Travis had the look of a killer, this was more like desperation.
“Hey. Where’s Julia?” I asked.
“She left two days ago. She took the boys . . .” he shuddered, “the boy, to her mother’s. She said she needed some space.” At that point I noticed that the house wasn’t too out of shape. Despite being alone, things still were organized.
“So, what’s going on? What do you have?” I hoped for a card, maybe a neat picture or something. He smiled.
“It’s down in the basement. Follow me,” he said. I followed. The basement felt like our special place where the original crew bonded. I had many good memories there. I could hear some faint sounds as we walked down the stairwell. We stopped in the dark, and he flicked on the light.
Sitting in a kitchen chair was a man I recognized, the drunk driver of the pickup truck who took Bryan’s son’s life. He sat tied up in ropes and duck-taped. His jaw looked dislocated. Tears rolled down his cheeks. The front of his pants was stained. He looked at me but didn’t seem to have the energy to move. I knew this was a place to tread lightly.
An assortment of items was on the pool table. A saw, pliers, hammer, nails, more rope and finally a knife all lay in a neat order. The same red stain coated the knife and the pliers.
“Well, what do you think?” Bryan asked. He still smiled.
“How long has he been here?” I asked. The smile broke.
“Is that a problem?”
This question bothered me. A bold move, something like taking a person hostage, required conscious effort. I hoped he still possessed a small part of right and wrong inside his head.
“Look. I know what happened. You can’t go on doing this.” I pointed to the guy.
“What would you do? Probation and a death? I don’t think the scales of justice leveled out on that one.” He held his hands up like the arms of a scale to make his point. It worked.
“So what’s the plan? Will you kill him?” I tried to shift his focus onto something else. “What if Julia comes back?”
“That’s the thing. I didn’t tell the entire truth about that.”
When he paused, I expected to see another chair off in the darkness in another part of the massive house and her tied up and in similar shape. “She’s not coming back.” I saw the ending before he did.
“No. No and why not? Her husband’s a failure. When you can’t protect your family what do you have left?”
“Bryan you’re a good father. You’re better than anyone else here.” After I said it, I realized that only counted Shawn, as Drew and I didn’t have kids. He missed the thought.
“Thanks. Well, I think it’s time that you go,” he said, and he walked over to put his arm over my shoulder. I jumped, and he laughed. “Don’t worry. I have some things to take care of down here.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. I kept going, just waiting for the first taste of fresh air.
“By the way,” he yelled up the stairs, “If the cops come, I’ll kill you too.” I couldn’t see his face when he said that, but I believed him. I heard the rip of duct tape and another scream.
I walked back down the street and knew something had to be done. Were relatives looking for the hostage? Hostage? God, Bryan was a terrorist now. Would he negotiate? Could I blame him for wanting the ultimate act of revenge? No. If that were my boy, I would do the same.
I knew that I could not commit to any solid action while in view of his house. Maybe he made his way up to a window to watch me. The scream that I heard disproved that, but you could never be too sure. Power could be an intoxicating thing, and he held his thumb over the life of someone else. He gave life to his son and was ready to take it away from his son’s killer.
I made a mental note that only two of the items on the pool table contained blood. Two days and he only went that far. What would he do with the body? He had that forest behind the house. I’m sure the saw, some time and energy could make him an innocent man for a long time. I finally arrived home, walked into the door, shut it and slid down to the floor and cried.
The funeral, the killings and this all caught up to me, and I lost it. Reading it now as I write it makes me sound weak, but I don’t care. When you saw death twice, and now looked directly into its face, you didn’t have an easy time looking into the mirror. All the weight caught up to me. Val still wasn’t home. The house, my house, stood dark.
Later, after everything settled, I sat at the kitchen counter. Val came home and went upstairs to take a bath. I went over scenarios in my head. Did I need to stop him? Why? I had to come up with something. At that point, I was the only person on the planet that knew of the situation in the Grand Estate. Kelly could include that in the next open house. “And in the basement, a perfect space for detainment and torture.” I laughed and was disgusted for a second at my laughter. I called Shawn and Drew to ask them over for a card game. Shawn didn’t want to, and Drew wondered why I wasn’t Bryan, our usual organizer. It took some convincing, but they both finally came over.
Chapter Fourteen
The Plan
We sat around the kitchen island as I explained the situation. It’s funny now to think about it, that they both believed me. Not often did your friend tell you that your neighbor was holding someone hostage and you needed a plan to get the guy out and not get killed in the process. The biggest thing we couldn’t believe is that this was Bryan, the guy with the two kids, the guy who was so happy to have us over those first few months. Something needed to be done.
Shawn asked about calling the police, and if we learned anything over the past, the police weren’t worth much around here. I used the same logic as I mentioned above, that this was Bryan and of course we could take him, to convince them that we needed to act. The situation was primal. Travis acted. He chose the wrong path, but he acted. We felt the need to do something to make things even again. We didn’t stop Travis, but we could stop this. The betrayal in both cases ran through so strongly that we had to make things right.
“I think we should play it out just like an action movie,” Shawn said, “We need to distract him and then jump him.”
“I think we can stop him,” Drew replied. He looked concerned.
I’ll never forget our walk over there. I didn’t call Bryan. The need just wasn’t there. We walked in the dark. The lights in Bryan’s house were on. The front door still stood open. We heard a faint noise in the distance that I didn’t like. It sounded like a power saw.
I stopped before the front door and turned to Shawn and Drew. I motioned for them to keep their voices down.
“He’s probably still in the basement,” I whispered.
We walked through the door, and from when I left, things had deteriorated. It looked like, in the few hours, someone had become pretty angry. I’ll do my best to paint this out for you.
We walked up the steps and into the entryway. The front door, I noticed this time, was bent off its hinge and stood there on two screws. The interior lights were on, but the kitchen light flickered. The house, looking normal earlier, felt like a stiff wind had come through. Two broken lamps lay on the floor in the living room. The television was now a box with a gaping hole where the glass and projection equipment used to sit. A trail of glass went from the floor of the living room into the kitchen, and judging from the fragments, they were every drinking glass and plate in the place.
One thing became clear in the flashing lights. Every piece of clothing left from Julia lay over the floor. She must not have packed much because it looked like a closet and a half spread throughout the rooms. The next thing I felt was the sharp blast of heat from the fireplace. It was a hot night, but the fire still roared, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the fuel. He had put something in there, and it gave off a faintly different smell.