It's Only Death

by Lee Thompson

  Neither of us moved. I wondered if my mom was looking out the window. I glanced to my right and saw the neighbor across the road, Mr. Dubois, looking out his window. Angela tapped her Tahoe three times with the palm of her hand and said, “You should get in. You don’t want anybody calling the police, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, hello! You do speak.” She pointed at the SUV. “Are you getting in or what?”

  I nodded, crossed behind the truck and opened the passenger door as she climbed back in behind the steering wheel. I stretched out in the seat and closed the door. Angela said, “I’ll drive, you talk. Deal?”

  She pulled out on the street and drove southwest toward the Everglades.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Don’t you think we have a lot to talk about? I don’t care where you start.”

  “Hello,” I said again.

  She said, “I heard you were back in town, James.”

  I extended my hand to shake hers but she shook her head, gripping the wheel.

  “How did you hear?”

  “My dad was talking on the phone to someone. He was heated. I heard him mention your name.” She glanced at me and then back at the road. “You need to avoid him at all costs, you hear me?”

  “I do,” I said. I folded my hands in my lap. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Yeah? Well I’ve been thinking about you since you had a massive stroke of cruelness and stupidity and ran away.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened, James?”

  “You’re not afraid of me?”

  “Why would I be afraid of you?”

  “I killed my dad. Nobody saw it coming,” I said.

  “I saw it coming,” Angela said.

  “Really?”

  “I just thought you’d come to blows and then you’d move out though. But I knew the two of you hated each other. I don’t know why everybody else acted all shocked, except maybe for your sister. She was too young to really understand why you did what you did.”

  “She’s changed a lot.”

  “Yeah,” Angela said, “I heard she’s stripping for a living.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s really none of your business,” she said. “I’ve talked to her a couple of times. I think she’s really mixed up.”

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “She hates you, you know that, right?”

  “Then why the hell did she ask me to come back?”

  Angela shrugged. She set the cruise at sixty-five. The road was wide open.

  She said, “Have you ever talked to anybody about that day?”

  “For what? I don’t know why I did what I did.”

  “You do,” she said. “What I don’t know is why you didn’t let me know you were okay, not once, in all the years you’ve been gone.” I could see tears forming in her eyes. I was tempted to reach for the steering wheel as the Tahoe started drifting toward the oncoming lane. The day was so bright it hurt my eyes as the sun glared off every windshield parked in the driveways of the houses we passed, reflecting off every water surface. Angela said, “Were you afraid I thought you were a monster? Were you afraid I’d tell my dad where you were?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t think much about anything.”

  “And that’s what gets me most. All you did before you robbed that bank was think. You were constantly doing it, almost to the point where I couldn’t keep up with you.” The houses thinned and soon we were surrounded by dense forest.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  “Worried,” Angela said. “Worried for ten years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think you are. I don’t think you remember all of the times we had over the five years we were together.”

  “We were just kids,” I said.

  “Kids who loved each other and had plans together,” she said.

  I nodded. I couldn’t argue with that.

  She sighed and said, “Have you seen your mom yet?”

  “Last night.”

  “And?”

  “She isn’t going to forgive me.”

  “And how does that make you feel?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. “Since the time I turned twelve I’ve always felt like she and my dad weren’t really my parents.”

  “That’s a weird thing to think when you’ve spent your whole life with them,” she said, “and it’s weird that you never told me that.”

  “That’s how it was.”

  “And now?”

  “She seems like my mother and yet she seems more like a stranger than ever.”

  Angela pulled off into a rest area and parked. People milled about. The tourists sweated streams on the asphalt, their shirts soaked, their hands dabbing their foreheads with tissues. Kids who would have normally been bundles of energy were lethargic and moody. Everybody seemed miserable.

  I looked at Angela and said, “Seeing you makes me feel incredibly lonely.”

  She frowned and took my hand and set it in her lap. Her fingers were warm. She left the Tahoe running and the air conditioner thrummed quietly. She said, “Did you miss me at all?”

  “You were the only girlfriend I ever had,” I said.

  “Did you ever miss me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I had to avoid thinking about anything so that’s what I did.”

  “And being back is torture, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.” She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. I had a fleeting thought, or one that I simply chased away because it disturbed me. It was too easy to imagine her as one of those women who wrote men on death row and established a fantasy relationship and fell in love with a doomed man.

  I said, “Do you still love me?”

  “I have a boyfriend,” she said. “We work together. He’s a good man.”

  “And what am I?”

  “You’re an asshole,” she said.

  I laughed for a second, and then nodded, and said, “I know.”

  “But you’re hard on yourself too, without realizing it.”

  “Are you happy?” I asked her.

  “With Benjamin?”

  “Is that your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just meant are you happy in general.”

  “Happiness comes and goes, James. It’s not like anyone is constantly happy. There are always little bumps in the road, or for some people, huge bumps.” She stared into my face. “What do you expect of me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why you swung by my mom’s looking for me.”

  She gave her attention to the parking lot and all the strangers wilting in the heat for a full minute. When she spoke again, it was in a voice so soft that I could barely hear her.

  “I didn’t know why I wanted to see you at first. I told myself that it was because I know my dad will kill you and I wanted to warn you, but that’s bullshit because you don’t need anyone to tell you that.” She bit her bottom lip for a second and squeezed my hand. “Then I told myself that I wanted an explanation, which was also a lie. Like I said, I already knew you and your dad were headed toward some kind of blowout.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” she said.

  “Do you still love me?”

  She released my hand. She said, “I loved who you were, James. I don’t know who you’ve become over the last ten years.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Do you? That’s great.”

  I said, “Do you own your own photography studio now?”

  She seemed so sad.

  I said, “What happened to your dream?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  She sighed and hung her head and rubbed her brow with trembling fingers. Up to that point she had seemed so in control that it had be
en kind of unnerving. Angela looked up and said, “I felt like you abandoned me. And everyone was saying such horrible things, to me, to your mother, to your sister, to my dad. But you didn’t have to hear it because you ran away like a coward instead of paying for what you did. I was so angry for the longest time. Maybe I still am to a degree, but mostly I’m just glad that you’re okay, that you look healthy and that nobody has killed you for being so stupid.”

  “I was asking about your photography studio,” I said.

  “Just let me talk, will you?”

  “Sure,” I said, wanting her to shut up, to return me to the Impala so I could sit there without thinking, sit there and watch the world move on without me.

  She said, “I was worried, like I said. I didn’t know how you’d survive, or how long the money you stole would last. I figured someone would rob you, or you’d show somebody what you took and they’d kill you for it. But I should have known better because you were never big on bragging about what you had.”

  “No,” I said.

  “My dating life was over though,” she said. “Nobody wanted anything to do with me. I think my own dad even figured you told me what you were planning. But you didn’t. Do you remember what we had planned for that day?”

  “No,” I said.

  She shook her head and stared at me harshly. “It was my birthday, James. We were supposed to go out to eat and go dancing and then relax together on the beach.”

  “Something came up,” I said.

  “You could say that,” she said, her expression softening. “How do you live with it?”

  “I wouldn’t call what I do living.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What happened to your dream?” I said. “I wish you’d just tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. I have a good job, a good life, I have friends again, and my dad doesn’t pry into what I’m doing. And he tore my room apart after you left looking for any letters you’d written, looking to see if I kept a journal, which I did, and he confiscated everything and as far as I know he never found anything that made him feel like it was worth it.”

  “Well, I’m back in town now. He’ll have his shot at me.”

  “You really are an asshole,” she said.

  “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “I wish you would have done something more with your life,” she said.

  I wiped my face. I was sweating despite the air conditioning. I swallowed and my mouth was dry. I said, “Do you want to run me back to my car?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’re going to die or go to prison in the next week or two, then I want to know that I said all I have to say before you do.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She looked out the windshield and said, “I could get in a lot of trouble just for talking to you.”

  “You could.”

  “Do you know what I do now?”

  “No,” I said. “I figured you’d tell me eventually.”

  “I’m a dispatcher.”

  “For what?”

  “For the police, stupid,” she said.

  “You’re a cop.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m a civilian. But my boyfriend is a cop.”

  “What was his name again?” I asked.

  “Benjamin.”

  “Right. And he’s what you want?”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “You keep saying that. So, he’s boring?”

  “You’re impossible to talk to,” Angela said.

  “It’s awkward seeing you. You really haven’t changed much.”

  “You haven’t either,” she said, studying my face. She frowned in a sad way and said, “I wish things could have been different. Look at all the heartache you caused.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You’re going to die or end up in jail.”

  “Someone will have to kill me,” I said. “I’m not going to prison.”

  We talked for another hour about things that didn’t matter. Angela talked about kids we’d known in school, and teachers we’d had, and other things that were no longer a part of me, or a part of her. I told myself that they were just memories. But when Angela started crying, I held her, and my own tears were hot on my cheeks and her breath was hot against my shoulder.

  * * *

  Later, after she’d taken me back to my mother’s house, I drove to the trailer park, thinking about Angela, realizing that if I loved anyone at all, it was her. I wanted her to dump her boyfriend, I wanted to be normal, I wanted for the two of us to pick up where we’d left off because it had been good for both of us. And I was also thinking about my sister and how Angela said that Harley hated me. It seemed like there was some way I could make things up to her, but how do you rectify something so horrible? How do you rebuild a bridge that you’ve let disintegrate for a decade? I remembered how my visit with my mother had gone and how Harley had come in crying, and how it was my fault, the nightmares my little sister had had, and I worried that her nightmares had started up again, that she saw me in her dreams, and I held a gun to her head as she lay in bed with the lights extinguished, the soft tick in her throat loud in the stillness.

  I needed to see her, to try to talk to her, but I made a big mistake swinging by her house early in the afternoon. I should have known better but I was so distracted with the past catching up to me.

  The same two kids were on their bikes, playing in the road. They paused when they saw me pull up in front of her driveway. Then they eased over into a yard across the road when someone yelled inside Harley’s trailer. It seemed like a lifetime ago when I’d destroyed Lincoln and his friends’ bikes in front of the Electric Lady.

  I knew that they were in there with Harley although I didn’t see a vehicle in her driveway. I was about to open the door when a man yelled again.

  Then five bikers, the same ones I’d seen at the strip club, tumbled out the front door and down the wooden steps, almost clawing each other’s eyes out to reach the Impala first. They looked cartoonish and childish in their rage, but I was certain that they’d kill me if they were able to drag me out of the car.

  I had the Impala still running and pulled it back into drive, my foot on the brake just as Shane and one of the older, fatter, bearded men jumped in front of the car.

  Hands slapped the hood, hands slapped the trunk.

  The lot of them looked about as friendly as a pack of wild dogs. It made me smile, god knows why. But my smile faded as Lincoln swung a tire iron and smashed the rear passenger window and I heard the scream building in his throat.

  I stomped on the gas and the Impala hit the boy and the older biker and knocked them out of the way, the kid holding his shattered knee and rolling on his back, the older guy lying on what was supposed to be a sidewalk, his head shattered and his brains leaking out.

  Lincoln threw the tire iron and it cracked the back window.

  I did not drive like a sane person for five minutes. I pulled over on the side of the road and parked with the air flowing in hot through the broken side window. All I could think was: What did they do to Harley? I didn’t want to imagine her in there on her couch, so beaten and bloodied that she was beyond recognition. Yet I knew those types of men, and hurting a woman didn’t cause them any grief. I worried that they’d kill her. That they’d look into her face and see mine and they would kick her to death on her living room floor because they could.

  I drove to our mother’s around two p.m. She blocked the doorway once she answered it, and scowled at me. “You don’t have to pound so hard,” she said. Then she looked at me a second longer and said, “What’s wrong? Is it Harley?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is she alive?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think she sold Mary Kay to the wrong people.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing. Let me in. I need Dad’s gun.”

  “You are not coming in thi
s house and you’re not taking your father’s weapon.”

  “I am, Mom. Some guys, some really bad guys are hurting Harley. Right now. They might kill her.”

  “Because of you? What did you do?”

  “Will you move?”

  “Tell me what you did.”

  “I might have provoked them a little bit.”

  “You never learn,” she said.

  “Move, Mom. Right now.”

  “I can’t believe she ever called you.”

  “She didn’t call me. I don’t have a phone. Move, please. I need to get over there and make sure they don’t beat her to death.”

  She moved, albeit slowly, and she paled considerably. She said in a weary, startled bleat, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged past her and almost knocked her over. “They’ll kill her, I’m serious about that. Is his pistol still in the den?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Elmore?”

  “James,” I said.

  “James, don’t let them kill her.”

  “I’m going to stop them, don’t worry.”

  She grew silent as I went into the den and found my father’s service pistol in a glass case. I grabbed a few boxes of .38 Special from the closet and made sure the gun was loaded and rushed past her back to the car. I heard her calling after me, “Let me know she’s okay, you hear me?” I nodded absently, the pistol in my lap, me behind the steering wheel, two boxes of ammunition in the passenger seat.

  As I drove I dumped out one box on the seat and filled my pockets with bullets. My dad had taught me to shoot. I could do it well. I could do it calmly, point a pistol at a human face and pretend it was nothing more than a paper target, and pull the trigger, and watch that bullet exit the back of a head and pretend that I was in a movie, that what was happening before me was little more than fancy special effects.

  I’ll have to pretend five times today, I told myself. And once I get her to a hospital, if she’s still breathing, then I better get the hell out of here and not come back.

  It seemed like a gift really, for me, and for my mother, and for Robert Stevens—to save my sister from her oppressors, for her to once again see me as the big brother that would protect her at all costs, to know that she would never spend time again with men who saw her as little more than a warm hole, and to devote herself to Robert, who would make her a good husband, be a good father to their children, be faithful and pay the bills and hold her on those cool nights when a hurricane was building in the distance…