Chapter Four
My brother was my best friend growing up. No, that wasn’t really it. I was his best friend. Dan had always been a loner, but he had never been a bad guy. He wasn’t weird or anything. He was just shy. And really, really smart. Everyone said his shyness was because of our father’s death. I was only two when Dad died. I don’t really remember him. My brother was seven. He remembered him, not much, but he did. Mom would say he was just like my dad. I think that bothered him, though he never said it did.
Dan wasn’t a sports guy, like me. He was more into math and science. He was always winning awards. Mom put them up on the wall. When Bobby Fischer was on the news with his chess, my brother took up chess and was a real pro. The school started a chess team and my brother stayed after school every day to play. He played with a timer and all. The team went to other schools and played kids there. He even played with adults and he always won. I couldn’t really understand the game. I always lost and stopped playing with my brother. It really is boring to play with someone who you can never beat.
Dan had a shortwave radio in his room and would listen to places all around the world. Sometimes he’d sit up late into the night. I don’t think my mom knew because he had headphones. He’d write to all the places he heard on the radio and they would send him a postcard in the mail. He had a scrapbook of all the postcards and I would look at it sometimes. I’d try to figure out where all the places were on the globe he had in his room. He started to put pins in the globe so I could see all the places he had listened to. He even built his own radio and let me help.
When Daniel got a scholarship and went away to college, I missed him a lot. It wasn’t that we did a lot of things together because we didn’t. First of all, there was our age gap. We had different friends and were involved in different activities. But Dan was always there, at home, for me. He’d help me with homework and listen to what was going on in my life. Having Dan around was more like a feeling, like knowing someone was on your team, rooting for you. That’s how it felt like having Dan home; someone was on my side.
For the first two years, he did really well in college. At least he got As in every subject he took. He said he liked it and Mom didn’t ask too many questions. It didn’t seem like he did too much in college. He never talked about it the way other kids did. He didn’t seem to have any friends either, but Dan had never really had any close friends in high school, just the other kids on the chess team. He didn’t go out and he didn’t go to parties. But I figured he was just a nerd and liked to study. But things changed during his junior year. He came home unexpectedly on the bus one weekend in March. He said he wasn’t going back. He didn’t look well when he came home. He used to keep his hair short and, while he was no statement in men’s fashion, he always wore clean clothes. Now his hair was long and he didn’t comb it. He didn’t wash his clothes and wore the same outfit for days in a row. He didn’t bathe. He smelled. Mom called the college and all they told her was they didn’t have the “facilities” for my brother and that my mother should take him to a doctor.
Things did stabilize, if you want to call it that. My brother would be up all night and sleep all day. He sort of stayed out of the way. But he was getting worse. I knew he was getting worse even though I had no idea what was really wrong with him. I could hear him, in his room, talking. Sometimes he’d laugh, sometimes he'd argue. But there was no one in his room but him. His hair became matted. He would sometimes look at me as if he had no idea who I was. Then, out of the blue, there would be whole weeks at a time where he would get up, bathe, walk in to town and be more like his old self. He’d even call up an old chess buddy and they’d play a few games.
A lot of people blame my mom. I think I blamed my mom for a while, too. But what could she do? She actually did take him to a doctor who told my mother it was stress. He told my mother that my brother was a “high achiever” and just needed some rest. He gave my brother some pills but I don’t know if he ever took them.
My mom was a great mom but she wasn’t a super-involved mom. It’s sort of hard to explain. She made great dinners, kept the house really clean, did all our wash and worked really hard so we could have things. She couldn’t really go to any of my sports games—I played three seasons, football, basketball and baseball—because of her work. She didn’t go to open houses, PTA meetings or anything like that, either. She always was too tired or working. She was a lot like my brother; she didn’t go out and she didn’t have friends. She was either at work or at home. The only friend she ever had over was Aunt May, and technically, my aunt was a relative, not a friend. In the evening, she asked us how school was or asked me how my game went. We’d watch TV together but she never really went beyond that. It was like my mom was there, but not really there. My aunt May said it was because of my father’s sudden death. She said Mom had been a different woman before my dad died. But I wouldn’t know about that.
The police pretty much emptied Dan’s room. They carted out all his journals. I had known about the journals but I didn’t know what was in them. I used to see him hunched over his desk writing for what seemed like hours. He would draw, too. He was actually pretty good at art. I did finally get his journals back. They found out where I was, years later, and asked where to send them. I still haven’t brought myself to read them all the way through or burn them, as they ought to be. I know they were filled with pages and pages of people he thought had to die and reasons they had to die. The police told me that. It was part of the “evidence” used against him. Daniel had elaborate fantasies of how people had to be killed. Naomi was in there. In a folder I got from Dan’s lawyer were the photocopies of those pages. I checked and she died pretty much the way he had planned it. He even had a pretty accurate drawing in there, her head exploding all over the wall behind her. Of course, Phil Moretti wasn’t in there because that wasn’t planned. I have never been able to check and see if I was in the journal. It’s just one of those things I’m not ready to know yet. Still, he was my only brother, and I wish I had been able to save him…
While the police ransacked our house, the media began to arrive. Vans with station logos on the side lined our narrow street. Cameras were set up pointed directly at the house. Reporters with oversized microphones walked around scrawling notes, or facing the camera and giving “live updates.” Aunt May drew all the curtains but it didn’t help. You could feel their presence, like a danger, outside. You could hear them buzzing like a hive.
And we just sat while this went on around us. Can you believe that? Not that we could have done anything, but the point is we didn’t do anything. We could have asked questions, objected as they sorted through our personal possessions but we didn’t. We just sat and waited. Waited for what I wasn’t sure. Were we waiting for it to be over? How could this be over? Were we waiting for things to go back to normal? How could anything ever even resemble normal again? Every once in a while a plain-clothes officer, probably a detective, would come over and ask a question such as, “Do you know if your son had any more guns anywhere?” My mother always looked at them wide-eyed, unable to answer. Uncle Elliot would grunt and Aunt May would simply look away.
Mid-afternoon a woman appeared with the police. She was serious-looking, tall and very muscular for a woman. Her dark brown hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. She had deep-set, brown eyes that looked almost black. She wore a white, button-down shirt and black pleated pants. There was something mannish about her but not quite. You could tell she was a police officer. It was in her bearing, her manner. But when she smiled at me, it seemed genuine. She introduced herself to Mom first.
“Hi, I’m Angela Hart.” She extended her hand to my mother sitting on the couch. “I’m with the State Police.”
Without standing up, my mother took her hand limply.
“I’d like to spend a little time asking Agustin some questions, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Woodard. It’s just a formality.” She smiled at me. On a day when no one smiled, this smile, for some re
ason, did not seem out of place.
Mom looked at me with that same, wide-eyed helpless look she had had all day. Uncle Elliot grunted. My aunt looked away. I stood to go with her.
“No,” Mom said suddenly, reaching out to touch me although she was too far away, “no, you can’t take him. I’ve already lost one son today.”
I thought this was odd. Daniel was not dead. But for the first time that day I wondered where he was. At the police station? In jail?
“I’m not going to take him anywhere. I just thought we’d have a little chat. We can stay here, in the house. I don’t need to take him anywhere.”
Mom looked up at me with her rheumy eyes. Angela Hart put her hand on my shoulder, smiled at my mother.
“I think we can have a bit of privacy on the back porch.”
I followed her because I didn’t know what else to do. We stepped outside. She put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo. She let her head drop back and inhaled deeply. .
“Boy, it feels good to get some fresh air, doesn’t it?”
I numbly agreed with her but she was right. It felt good to get out of the living room. The house was oppressive. The waiting was oppressive. I could hear the buzz of the reporters and police around front but, for now, the back yard was peaceful.
“I hear you’re a bit of a baseball player,” she smiled at me again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She laughed a little, “Call me Angie, ok? This isn’t anything formal.” She motioned to one of our porch chairs. I obediently sat. I was a good boy back then. She leaned against the porch railing.
“You were down playing baseball this morning?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you do anything else this morning?”
“Uncle Elliot took me for my permit test.”
“Did you pass?” She smiled. The question caught me off guard.
“Yes,” I answered after a slight hesitation.
“Congratulations.”
I blushed. I felt confused.
“Did you see your brother this morning? Talk to him?”
“No...” I started to say ma’am, caught myself but could not bring myself to call an adult woman by her first name. “No. I think he was asleep when Uncle Elliot came. He’s usually asleep until the afternoon.”
She nodded.
“Did your brother talk to you at all about Naomi Tillson? Did he ever mention her?”
“No.” I looked up at her. “Actually, he doesn’t really talk much about anything anymore.”
“Why is that?”
I thought a moment; why is that?
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “After he came home from college he was acting a little weird, that’s all.” Then I thought to add quickly, “But not like he was going to kill anybody or anything.”
“Weird how?” she asked. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.
I shrugged but she just kept looking at me, waiting for an answer.
“Just weird,” I tried, hoping she would let it go at that.
“Can you give me an example?” She had crossed her arms on her chest.
I sighed deeply. I gave in.
“He just doesn’t talk to us anymore. He stays in his room all the time.”
She nodded.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Danny?” I snorted in disbelief. “No. Why should I be afraid of Danny?”
Then I thought about Naomi Tillson. He killed her. I didn’t even know how.
“How many guns did your brother have?”
“I didn’t even know he had any.”
So, that’s how he did it. He shot her. I wondered where. I wondered how. Angela Hart was nodding again.
“What about you?”
“Me what?”
“Guns. Do you have any guns?”
“No,” I sounded indignant.
She looked at me a long time as if I was keeping a secret and she was going to get it out of me.
“My brother is a good guy,” I said finally. “He’s just had some problems lately. I don’t think he meant to hurt anyone. It was probably just an accident.”
I didn’t know when I made that stupid statement that the gun was just six inches from Naomi’s face when he pulled the trigger. I didn’t know that her entire face exploded, some of it getting on my brother’s face, in his hair, the blood staining his white T-shirt a bright red.
When we went inside my mother was standing.
“We can’t stay here tonight,” she said abruptly.
I didn’t argue with her. I wanted to get the hell out of there. We packed a few things and the police took us to Uncle Elliot and Aunt May’s house. They took a drive around the neighborhood a few times to make sure we weren’t being followed.
Mom got the guest room upstairs and Aunt May had set up a cot in her sewing room for me. They weren’t exactly used to entertaining overnight guests. I left most of my stuff in the suitcase because there really wasn’t any place for me to unpack. Uncle Elliot just sat in stony silence in front of the TV. Aunt May fluttered around and kept asking us if we needed anything.
We watched the evening news. I don’t know whose idea it was or why we did it but we did. I think it was part of Uncle Elliot’s nighttime routine. Aunt May called a doctor to come to the house because after the news my mother collapsed on the floor and started to vomit. Something in the news story had made it all suddenly seem so real for her. She couldn’t stop getting sick and had trouble staying upright. The doctor gave her a pill and she fell asleep. I said I was fine. I went to my room and lay on the thin cot staring at the ceiling all night.
Chapter Five
We went home around noon the next day and the house was trashed. And I mean trashed. Every drawer, every cabinet was open and all our things lay in piles on the counter, on tables, on all the chairs and on the floor. The press was still outside and Uncle Elliot told them ‘to get the hell out of there’. That was on the evening news, Uncle Elliot yelling at the reporters. Mom and I started cleaning up because we didn’t know what else to do.
After Uncle Elliot was finished with the reporters, he came in and said to my mother, “You really shouldn’t stay here, Helen. At least not for now. Let things calm down a bit.”
My mother was a tall, bony woman. She had short, straight hair that wasn’t exactly stylish. Even before my brother had killed Naomi Tillson and Phil Moretti, her eyes had always had that surprised look. She looked at my uncle with those eyes.
“I have nowhere else to go,” Mom said. It was a fact. My mother’s family were all dead.
“Well, I don’t think it’s good you stay here. It’s not good for you.” He looked over at me. “Or for Gus.”
She turned to me as if she hadn’t seen me in a long time and mouthed, “Gus.”
I stood looking at her.
“Well,” she said turning back to my uncle, “we could stay with you.”
“No,” he said it so quickly and so certainly it shocked me. “I mean,” he tried to sound more reasonable, “I don’t think it would be good for you to stay in town.”
The room grew silent.
“I’m really not in the position...” Mom started.
“Just for a few days. Until things calm down.”
My mother nodded.
I knew there were things going on without my knowledge. At the same time I didn’t want to know. I felt I already knew too much.
“Can’t we see Dan?” I asked. I wanted to talk to him, ask him what happened, and get his side of the story.
My mother turned again to look at me with those wide eyes.
Uncle Elliot said, “Absolutely not. Not now.”
Mom just wandered off to another room. I was left standing in the middle of the floor with the mess all around me.
“When can we see him?” I was not going to let this drop.
“Not for a while, Bud.” My uncle called both me and Daniel “Bud” as if he didn’t know our real names.
“It’s not safe, Bud, plus I don’t think the police will let you see him until things have calmed down, you know?”
Mom was putting things away. It’s odd but having something to do with your hands is a good thing when the entire world has gone mad. It gives you focus, something tangible to think and do. I helped her finish putting things away as best we could. Then we each packed a suitcase. We weren’t talking. No one was talking. I wondered where we would be going.
The phone rang. My mother just stared at it. My uncle was outside on the back porch having a smoke. I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Get out of town, you murdering motherfucker.” The voice was low, growling, not quite human.
“I’m sorry; you must have the wrong number.” What else could I say?
“I know what number this is, you sick motherfucker. I’ll kill you and your whole family, you motherfucker.”
I hung up. My mother did not ask who called.
My uncle drove us to a cheap motel in Albany which was about an hour away from our home. It was one step up from a welfare motel. I guessed no one would be looking for us here. He gave my mother $100 and a bottle of whiskey to “help her sleep”.
“Take care of your mother, Bud,” he said to me, with an air of finality. I stood and watched my uncle drive away. He did not look back.
I was wary of his intentions. My uncle had always seemed like a good guy, but at the time, there was something off about him. There was something about my uncle you just couldn’t put your finger on. He never really spoke too much to Dan or me. He often told my mother what to do and she listened to him without questioning him. He had stepped in when my father died and it always seemed more from a sense of responsibility than actual relationship. He and my aunt, May, had no children of their own. I didn’t understand about those things. All my mother would say was, “They couldn’t.”
Uncle Elliot was always there when something like a father was needed: Boy Scouts, fishing trips, driving lessons and the like, but never with much enthusiasm. I always got the feeling that he somehow blamed my mother for my father’s death, though I couldn’t point to anything specific that would make me feel that way. When I asked Uncle Elliot about my father, all he would say was, “Your father was a good guy. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
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