by Tami Hoag
John didn’t bother pointing out that no one knew for a fact that Casey Grant was dead, let alone a murder victim. Nor did he point out that he was an actual killer, that he had killed numerous people in two wars, yet he was being judged for an imagined death. Irony would not be his friend in this fight any more than Tony Tarantino was his friend.
“And then we see on the news this morning some waitress got raped last night leaving the Grindstone—”
Heat flashed through John, burning his face and the back of his neck. His fists tightened to stone in his coat pockets. “I’m no rapist, sir.”
“I didn’t say you were! But someone attacked that girl, and now people are going to be freaked-out.”
Tarantino sighed like a man with chest pains. He pulled out his wallet and fingered out two hundred-dollar bills, thrusting the money at John with sheepish embarrassment. “Take this for now. To tide you over. I’ll find you another job. I promise.”
John looked at the money with disdain. “I don’t need your handout, sir.”
“Yes, you do,” Tony blustered, shoving the cash at him. “Take the goddamn money. Buy yourself a different coat, for Christ’s sake. One that doesn’t have your fucking name on it.”
John glanced down at the patch on the army-issue jacket he had worn to serve his country. The name tag had already begun to come loose at one corner, the broken thread twirling up out of the fabric like a tiny filament corkscrew. He grabbed hold of the tag, tore the name off in one violent motion, and threw it on the ground. Then he pulled himself to full height and looked down his nose at Tony Tarantino with his hundred-dollar bills clutched in his fat hand.
With as much dignity as he could muster, he said, “Fuck you, sir.”
And he turned and walked away.
“John. John!” Tony called.
John kept walking toward his truck. The thought struck him that he could have taken the money and gotten his taillight fixed. Behind him he could hear the scuffle of Tony’s sneakers on the crushed asphalt.
“Come on, kid,” Tarantino said. “Don’t be so fucking proud.”
He grabbed hold of John’s arm from behind. John spun around, throwing off his boss’s hold and shoving him backward all in one motion. Automatically, his left arm came up and back, cocked and loaded, fist ready. Fear flashed in Tarantino’s eyes.
John pulled himself back, pulled his anger inward. He lowered his arm. “I don’t have much to be proud of, sir,” he said, “but I’ll hang on to it.”
He climbed in the truck and coaxed the engine to life. As he pulled out and headed down the alley, he glanced in the rearview mirror to watch Tony Tarantino standing there with his hands on his hips, growing smaller and smaller along with his opportunities.
He didn’t know where he was going. God knew, he didn’t have anyplace to go. He drove around town trying to organize his thoughts, trying not to wonder how much shittier his life could get, trying not to let the anger take control.
The truth was, he knew exactly how shitty life could get. Life could blind you, maim you, take your legs, take your arms, blow your face off your head but leave you alive. He’d seen all of those things. He knew more broken people than whole ones. Even most of those who appeared intact were shattered inside.
Sometimes he thought the men whose seventeen names he had tattooed down his back were the lucky ones. He had had their names etched into his skin to carry their memories with him. Many times he had wondered if they would have rather he hadn’t. Hadn’t they suffered enough in their own lives? Now they had to be witness to his failures and to the rejections of the people they had all signed up to serve.
He drove past the elementary school and the high school, unable to call up a single good memory from his time in either place. He had been a good athlete and had known success in several sports, but in his present state of mind he could remember only conflicts and betrayals and disappointments.
His senior year, he had been offered a football scholarship to Indiana State at Terre Haute. But then Casey had gone missing and the cops had been all over him. Suddenly he had been a villain in every newspaper and on every television in the state. He was the troubled loner boyfriend of a town sweetheart, the kid with a history of violent run-ins, the son of a bully, abandoned by his mother. There was clearly something wrong with him. Who knew what darkness lay in his heart?
The scholarship offer had been withdrawn. The military had been presented as his only honorable option. Better to get the hell out of Dodge before the detectives could pin something on him.
Truth to tell, the army suited him. He liked the structure of it. He had felt a greater sense of family with the men he served with than he had ever known at home. Nobody in his unit cared who he had been. They had all come there to reinvent themselves in one way or another.
He missed it. He missed it badly. Not the war, but the rest of it. When the army had cut him loose, he had lost everything—his career, his family, his home, his future, his sense of self-worth. The sense of betrayal and rejection was like a deep bruise that never healed. He had given everything, had done everything asked of him. He had been awarded medals for his bravery and his valor. He had been wounded in his efforts to give his all, and because of that, because he had sacrificed for the cause, the very organization that had asked that sacrifice of him had turned its back on him. He was broken because of the army, and the army didn’t want him because he was broken.
His head injury had been misdiagnosed for a long while after the IED incident. He hadn’t appeared to be that badly hurt. The damage was hidden inside his skull and had manifested itself in blackouts and bad decisions, outbursts of rage, debilitating headaches, frightening mood swings. His efforts to self-medicate with alcohol had only magnified the problems.
An altercation with a superior had landed him in the brig for assault. The headaches had moved him from the brig to the hospital. In the hospital, a psychologist had diagnosed him as bipolar, and that had been the end of his career. The hill had continued to go down from there, and here he was, back in Shelby Mills, starting over at less than zero.
It was a wonder he was alive, considering. Most days he wasn’t sure life had been the best choice. And then he would think of the names on his back and the fact that those men had had no choice at all.
He drove away from downtown, past the picturesque old water-mill complex that had given the town its name. The original Shelby Mill building had been transformed years ago into a posh restaurant with a hotel adjacent in a setting of wooded gardens. He had eaten in that restaurant once in his life: on the night of his senior prom with Casey, an awkward double date with Dana Nolan and Tim Carver. He had worried the entire time he would use the wrong fork or spill something or say something stupid.
The memory of that awkward apprehension came back to him now to mingle with the anger and the frustration and the shame and all the rest of it that constantly simmered inside him; a flood of emotion, all of it angry and bitter and dark. Every time it came, he thought he would drown in it. It swamped his brain and swelled in his chest, the rage building and building. The faces swam in it—Tony Tarantino, Paula, Tim Carver, Dana Nolan, Casey—their expressions masks of disapproval and disdain.
Goddamn them all. Who were they to judge him? They didn’t know him. No one had ever known him. No one had ever taken the time to see who he really was. No one. Not the people he worked with, or the people he went to school with. Not his father—least of all that wretched son of a bitch who had called him a loser and a quitter his whole life. Not his mother, who hadn’t stuck around long enough to know him past the age of eight.
The emotions in full boil now, he pulled into the driveway of his house and got out of the truck, breathing hard, his heart pounding. He went into the garage via the side door, stripping off his coat and casting it aside, not caring where it fell. He pulled his sweater over his head, balled it up, and f
lung it. His pace quickened as he crossed the floor until he was running at the old heavy leather punching bag that hung from a ceiling joist.
He launched himself at the bag from five feet out, slamming his shoulder into it, absorbing the pain, welcoming the pain as it exploded through his chest and neck and down his back. The bag swung away, sending him past like an angry bull sidestepped by a matador.
John turned and came back swinging, bare knuckles connecting hard with the cracked leather and the patches made of duct tape. Left, right, left, right. One-two, one-two. Left hook, right hook, left hook, right hook.
He grabbed the bag in a clinch and drove his right knee into it as hard as he could again and again, then switched his stance and brought the left knee up once, twice, three times, four times.
With every punch, with every knee, his breath left him on a hard, guttural sound. He sucked in oxygen tainted with the smell of stale grease and gasoline. His pores opened and sweat beaded on the surface of his skin despite the chill of the fall air. As he worked the bag, the sweat ran down his back, across the seventeen tattooed names, and soaked the back of his pants.
He threw his hands until the muscles of his arms were bulging and heavy, the veins popping. He twisted into the hooks until the taut, ripped muscles that wrapped around his rib cage and stretched across his belly were burning and quivering with fatigue. He threw knees until it felt like his boots were made of lead.
When his hands hurt too much to connect another punch, and his knuckles were raw and bleeding, he switched to throwing elbows, imagining the strikes connecting to the faces of everyone who had ever looked down on him—Tony, Paula, Tim Carver, Dana Nolan; the list went on and on . . .
The emotions poured out of him like toxic steam, bitter and acrid. He could taste it like metal in his mouth. The feelings came up from the depths of him like bile. And when his body was spent, and his knees gave out, and he lay in an exhausted heap on the dirty floor, the last of the emotions drained out of him in his tears.
11
What if I don’t like her?” Dana asked for what was probably the fourth time in fifteen minutes.
“What if you do?” Lynda asked back. “What if she’s the coolest person you’ve ever met?”
Dana didn’t answer. Her mood was stuck on pessimism. It felt better to be angry than apprehensive.
She had managed to shower and brush her teeth but had refused to make much more of an effort than that. No makeup. No jewelry. She had left her hair wet and had dressed from a pile of clothing that had fallen to the floor during her fitful sleep—a pair of baggy jeans and an oversize black hooded sweatshirt.
Before Dana had been all about her looks, all about the wardrobe and what her clothing said about her. What her current look said about her was that she didn’t give a damn. Her post-incident wardrobe consisted of T-shirts and hoodies, sweatpants, yoga pants, and jeans. After Dana was the Anti-Dana. Why should she try to impress people with her looks when her looks had been taken from her? Why seek approval when all she would get was pity? What did any of that superficial bullshit matter anyway?
She certainly didn’t care to impress Dr. Roberta Burnette. She hated the idea of starting the process of therapy all over again. She didn’t want to have to tell her story again or be asked how she felt about it.
The stupidest question of all time: How did she feel about having her life destroyed? How did she feel about having been raped and tortured?
To distract herself, she opened her photos app and looked at the picture she had taken of John Villante the night before.
He scowled at her in a sideways glance, straight dark brows pulled low over narrowed dark eyes. He had an angular face pulled taut over high cheekbones and a square jaw. Even set in a hard line, his mouth was, for lack of a better word, beautiful, with a full lower lip. He could have been a Calvin Klein model, sullen and angry, selling designer underwear and sexuality on the pages of GQ.
He had always had a chip on his shoulder but never had much to say. Dana had never really approved of him as a boyfriend for her best friend. Casey could have done so much better than an angry boy from the wrong side of town. She remembered him thinner, lean and hungry looking, with an unruly head of dark wavy hair that looked silly when she tried to attach it to the image of the man on her phone screen.
That was the difference. He had been a boy then. He was a man now. In her memory of before, John Villante was a teenage boy, a troubled loner who never quite fit in. Years later, he was a man, a soldier—or had been, at least. Whatever innocence he had possessed had been shorn away along with his hair. The anger and resentment he had carried as a boy had had seven years to harden into bitterness.
Seven years changed everyone. Dana wondered what Casey would have been like now. She had talked about becoming a social worker to help kids, or maybe to work with people with drug and alcohol abuse issues. She had always been a caretaker.
Outside of school, they had both volunteered at the local food bank and helped out with the kids’ reading program at the public library. But where Dana had felt fulfilled in doing her civic duty, Casey had always made it more personal. It hadn’t been enough to stock the shelves at the food bank. She had to befriend the little kids of the families who came there. It hadn’t been enough to read to children during story hour at the library. She had to mentor a little girl as well. It hadn’t been enough to volunteer at the animal shelter. Casey had to feed half a dozen feral cats that lived in the woods at the edge of her neighborhood.
Casey had always taken in strays . . . like John Villante. They had started dating the fall of their senior year. Bubbly, sunny Casey and the agent of gloom.
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
Dana looked up, surprised to see they were no longer in Shelby Mills. Lost in thought, she had missed the drive to the northern suburban reaches of Louisville. They had pulled into a parking lot adjacent to a long old two-story brick building that had once been a train station. The ground floor was filled with galleries and boutiques, places to eat and have coffee.
“I can do it,” Dana said automatically.
“I know you can do it,” Lynda said. “That’s not what I asked you.”
Dana said nothing as she stared at the unfamiliar building. What if she couldn’t find the directory? What if she couldn’t find the elevator?
“Come on. We’ll go find the elevator,” her mother said, getting out of the car. “I see opportunities for retail therapy. I’ll check those out while you’re with Dr. Burnette. You can text me when you’re finished and I’ll meet you. Does that sound like a plan?”
Relieved, Dana nodded. She took a photo of the building from their parking spot and made a note for future reference, then opened her parking app and set it to find the car later. Then she took a deep breath to brace herself for the next task at hand: opening herself up to the stranger who would want to drag all her ugly secrets out into the light.
* * *
“I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING,” Dr. Burnette began as she took a seat in a leaf-green upholstered cube of a chair near the bank of windows. Barefoot, she curled her long legs beneath her with the grace of a deer. She was dressed in gray yoga pants and a fitted fuchsia T-shirt that showed off an athlete’s body. Her bare arms were smooth and long, sculpted in lean muscle.
“You’re thinking: What’s this crazy-looking black woman gonna do for me? I’ve done told my story more times than I ever want to, and now I have to start all over and do it again, and that’s gonna hurt, and I’m gonna hate it, and fuck this shit.
“Am I right?” Burnette asked.
Dana just stared at her, not sure what to think. This was not Dr. Dewar, Mother Earth, with her pseudo-hippy skirts with sitar music playing in the background. Roberta Burnette was thirtysomething with a trendy urban vibe about her. She wore her hair in short braids all over her head with a random assortment of colored
beads woven in. Her ears were pierced with moonstone gauges that seemed to change color every time she moved her head.
“I know I’m right,” she said. “And I’ll tell you why I know I’m right. Because I’ve been the one sitting right where you’re sitting, thinking all the same things,” she said, her voice growing softer. She paused at that, giving Dana a moment to absorb what she had said, waiting for a reaction.
Dana didn’t blink.
“I know this isn’t easy,” Burnette continued. “It’s like you already built a house out of Legos and somebody has taken it all apart and you have to start over, and the last thing you want to do is start from scratch because that means the first thing you have to do is walk around in your bare feet, stepping on all those damn Legos.
“I have a six-year-old nephew,” she confessed. “I know all about stepping on Legos.”
Still Dana said nothing. Legs tucked beneath her, she burrowed back as far as possible into the corner of the love seat, which was the bark-brown counterpart to the chair Burnette occupied.
The room had a Zen quality to it—a polished old plank floor, sage-green walls, furnishings with clean, simple lines, and upholstery fabrics with organic colors and textures. One wall of simple built-in shelving displayed books and a collection of colorful, heavy glass sculptures with smooth, rounded shapes. While there were several lamps on tables around the room, only the lighting in the bookcases was turned on to spotlight the art pieces. Natural light filtered in through the tall windows that overlooked a cobblestone yard where people strolled or sat on park benches or at café tables, sipping coffee.
Dana stared out at them, envying their seemingly simple lives. From the corner of her eye she could see Burnette flip open a file folder to consult whatever notes were kept inside. She peered at Dana over the purple rims of her reading glasses.
“It doesn’t say anything in here about you being mute. Is this something new? Nod for ‘yes.’ Shake your head for ‘no.’”