by Bret Lott
I was nothing.
I swung my head toward the bow of the boat, blinked once, twice.
Five stood there, hunched over not two feet from me, only a shadow, and weeping.
And here beside him was Tabitha, just forward of him. She too was a shadow, but I could make out the sweep of her hair back into a ponytail.
Tabitha. Here.
I’d driven all the way to Palo Alto for her, met her one late afternoon out front of her Spanish fortress of an apartment complex, leaf shadows moving at our feet. She’d had on an old pair of jeans, a gray sweatshirt, her hair back in a white headband, and had never been more beautiful.
Go home go home go home go home go home, she’d shouted at me with her hands, each point of her fingers two shots into my chest, each touch to mouth and cheek a fist to my face.
But then she’d softened, looked at me with her perfect brown eyes, and slowly, carefully signed, You have a purpose. Get through the past. Then be Huger.
And just beyond her, just off the bow of this boat, just out there and far enough away so that it seemed a dream I might have had, some place I’d known only in sleep—I tried at another hard breath through my nose, and another—stood a white stucco house twenty yards in, beside it a waist-high brick fence almost down to this creek.
No light on in an upstairs room this time.
“You first,” Prendergast whispered, and I felt him push me from behind toward the bow, and knew the jab beneath my shoulder blade was a gun. A pistol barrel, same as Jessup’d held to my neck.
The push made me bump hard into Five, who nearly fell, and then here I was beside Tabitha, and I looked at her, looked at her, tried to see her eyes what might be this one last time.
But there was nothing. Only the shadow of her face.
“Go,” Prendergast said again, and I turned, looked toward the house. But past it, too, to the Cuthberts’ place fifty yards farther back and to the right through the trees, where last night I’d seen their coach lamp on, that dime-sized halo it cast on the brick wall it was mounted to.
Maybe they were up. Maybe they’d see a boat sneaking into the Dupont place, and call it in.
But even that light was gone. Nothing. Only black.
Prendergast shoved me, a spike twisted in my ribs, and I lurched past Tabitha, then turned and sat on the bow.
I was facing away now, and saw them all, a jumble of shadowed ghosts, waiting for some purpose, waiting for the next move.
Here was Tabitha just to my right, behind her Five. Here was Prendergast to the left, past them all and beside the console Unc, and Coburn.
Behind them all the whole of the marsh, the uneven spread of blacks and grays and silvers out here. Across it all, a good half mile away, the low jagged tree line: a long line of men on horseback, watching, waiting.
“Now, Huger,” Prendergast whispered, “you’re going to walk on up to the house, and you won’t make a single move otherwise. I’ve got a gun, and Coburn here has one too. And what you’re going to see soon as you get close enough is Jessup standing up there and waiting on you. And you’re going to see he’s got his very own gun too. One he’s holding on your momma.” He paused, and I heard him cock the pistol in his hand, a thick metal chunk of sound. “Believe me,” he whispered, “you make one move to bolt and I’ll pop the girl here, Coburn will do dear Leland, and Jessup’ll have his own fun with Eugenie.” He paused, gave a little laugh, said, “We’ll bat cleanup with baby Warchester the Fifth here,” and Five whimpered loud.
But I was already turned to the house, because Mom was there. She was there, just like I’d thought she’d be, and I knew she was scared, and so I closed my eye, eased down off the bow a little sideways, my arms still behind me and sore for it, the wrists, I felt now, raw for the cuffs, my shoulders a solid band of ache. I slipped down from the bow, ready for the sink into pluff mud, the same mud that’d turned my arms into stumps only last night. The same mud that’d served the purpose to hide a body, until Unc had touched it with a pole.
But it was hard ground I hit, the bow of this boat far enough in, the tide not yet at dead low. I was on ground.
I opened my eye.
The world hadn’t changed. I hadn’t been delivered, nor none of us. No one’d saved us, no answer to prayer here. But I was standing on hard ground.
I took in a breath, stepped out and away from the boat, toward the house, and toward my mom.
And saw the path.
The same one we always used when we came in here to golf. Even to call it a path was to give it more credit than it was due: just the simple parting of cordgrass to left and to right, only a break a few inches wide. But clear to me, even in this dark.
A path. The way we always walked in, and the way we always left.
I stepped onto it, and looked ahead of me, saw the white stucco house, gray in the dark, and saw up there, those twenty yards away, a set of French doors, where Nina had stood and screamed at the knowledge suddenly in her of what Coburn had done: the honor he’d bestowed upon Ellen.
And now I was through the cordgrass, out on the grass. I heard from behind me Prendergast whisper loud, “Move, Warchester!” and then what I knew was Five’s crying, a shredded squeal that sounded full of air somehow, and now I could make out, standing there to the right of the doors, two people.
My mom, there in a white top that’d nearly blended in with the side of the house. Beside her a shadow: Jessup. He stood a couple feet from her, had an arm out perpendicular from him, his hand, I could see, to her neck.
Five still cried behind me, and I heard steps through the cordgrass, quiet snaps of it as he walked through them, and now I heard too a heavy thump, and another: Unc and Coburn, or Tabitha and Prendergast.
But it didn’t matter, because now, now, the dark of this world was fading around me, and all I could see ahead of me was the end of the path I’d walked, the one I’d been on my whole life long.
I saw the purpose, the why of my being here, right now. Here.
This was the end of my life, I knew. This was the end.
Inside the house was a video camera. Inside, too, had to be a woman named Nina, another named Tammy, the both of them afraid, I knew, for their lives, and I saw again Nina scream last night, and saw Tammy tackled by Coburn, her shoulders heaving for the way she sobbed.
I moved closer, saw clearly now Mom, her arms behind her, duct tape around her head as well, and I saw Jessup beside her, saw the gun in his hand, while the rest of the world around me disintegrated into ash, into wind and nothing and night, and now I ran at him, because none of it mattered, and all I knew to do was to try to arrive at the end of this path, the one that was only mine and that would end only with my stopping the man in front of me from harming my mother, whom I loved and would love and had all my life.
The man was Jessup. He had been a friend. But he was a terrorist.
He was death.
This is enough, I thought. This is enough, and all I will bear. I will give up my life, I will give it up.
And I ran the last few feet at him, across the patio, staggered and lurched and tried to breathe inside this pain beyond pain in me, and still ran at him, because I knew this was the end.
“Shoot him,” came Prendergast’s voice from far far away, and I heard a strangled cry from back there too, and knew it was Unc, my father, and that he was crying out to me, and for me.
“Not yet,” Jessup said, his voice cold, sure, and I saw his arm with the gun in it swing from my mother’s neck to me, heard now Coburn’s voice behind me say, “Then I will,” the words no whisper at all, and closer than Prendergast: It’d been him and Unc to climb off the boat after Five.
And Jessup fired, two times in a row.
I saw the flash off the muzzle two feet in front of me, twin explosions of light, and I fell forward, pitched toward him, and hit the side of the wrought-iron table, crashed to the ground.
But I was here.
I felt pain, but the same pain I’d known
the whole ride here: there in my ribs, and in my eye.
Here now was Mom, the duct tape pulled down from her mouth. Mom, pushing at me, touching my shoulders, my chin, my forehead. “Huger!” she cried, her face crumpled up.
And standing there behind her, still with his arm out and holding his gun back toward the boat, was Jessup.
Then here were lights down on us, a blast of them from all around us, a flood of them from what seemed inside the trees and beside the house. Lights, and lights, as though midday’d burst down upon us, as though I were suddenly inside a different dream than the one I’d been in only a moment before, the one in which I’d been shot through and still felt only the pain of a fist to the eye, boots to my stomach.
Mom’s face was lit up now, and she squinted for it, and I saw her glance up and away from me, toward where Jessup was pointed.
“That’s it, Commander,” Jessup said loud, and stepped away from us.
Mom peeled down the tape at my mouth, and I breathed in as far as I could, breathed in relief beyond relief, though my ribs wouldn’t allow much in at all.
And now I heard sounds: movement in the trees and bushes around us, just beyond the light smashing down on us, and I rolled over, sat up with all the strength I had left in me, and saw.
Unc was on his knees ten yards away in the grass, breathing hard. Beside him, on his back, lay Coburn.
Jessup’d shot him. Jessup.
He’d saved me, shot Coburn just as he was about to shoot me.
To the left and a few feet from Coburn stood Five. He was trembling, his hands still behind his back, mouth still taped over. He was looking down at Coburn, his eyebrows sharp together, in his eyes the wild look of fear.
And past them, his back to us and maybe ten yards out from the end of that cordgrass path, stood Jessup, his gun still out and pointed.
At Prendergast, who stood in the bow of the boat, lit just as clear as the rest of Dupont’s backyard, with Tabitha’s head in a choke hold, his gun at her temple.
“No!” I shouted, and rolled to my knees, tried to stand.
Mom, kneeling beside me, pressed down on my shoulders, held me in place, and Jessup called out, “Please put your weapon down, sir.” He took another step toward them, called out, “We’re all here. You’re zeroed in, sir. It’s over. Sir.”
Even from here, twenty yards away, I could see the charged look in Prendergast’s eyes, his mouth open, the gun tight to Tabitha’s head. And I could see Tabitha’s eyes too, squinted down near to shut, her forehead furrowed sharp, the quick shiver of breaths in and out of her.
I tried to stand. I tried.
But it was Mom who stood, right here beside me, and I watched her walk away from me, and toward Jessup.
Her back was to me, and she moved past Five, still trembling, then past Coburn’s body without a moment’s pause. She didn’t even look at Unc still on his knees as she walked down the lawn, and now she was almost to Jessup, still with his gun out and pointed at Prendergast and Tabitha.
And now I saw her reach behind her and up into the bottom of the white blouse she had on, saw her hand work a second, and pull from there her gun.
A Beretta subcompact.
“Say it,” she said loud. “Say what you did,” she said, and moved past Jessup a few feet, then stopped.
She squared up to the boat, the gun in both hands: perfect form.
“You got to be kidding me,” Prendergast said, and shot out a laugh. “You got to be fucking kidding me,” and he cinched down tighter in just that moment on Tabitha, whose eyes closed altogether. Prendergast shook his head hard once, blinked, tried at a smile. “Is this a joke?”
“Mrs. Dillard, you need to—” Jessup started, but then a voice cut in from somewhere in the trees to my left, heavy and dark and no one I’d ever heard before: “Put down your weapon, Commander.”
Prendergast looked up quick, squinted at the light as though he could see through it to whoever this was.
“There’s others I know of,” Prendergast said loud. “There’s others out there. Other cells.” He paused, swallowed, scanned the trees. “You make me some guarantees and we can talk.”
“Say it!” Mom nearly shouted now, the gun out and right on him. “You tell them all who you are! You tell them!”
“What in the fuck?” Prendergast said, and looked down at Mom, shook his head once more, like he couldn’t believe she was really there. Like this wasn’t a piece of what was happening right here, this moment.
Like what he’d done so very long ago could ever matter to anyone involved. Least of all him.
He yanked Tabitha up off her feet a moment, nestled his head right down next to hers. His eyebrows were together, mouth open in disbelief at this woman, there with a gun.
“What do you want?” he said. “You want me to kill this bitch over what happened forty years ago?” He paused, shook his head again, then looked up, scanned the trees. “You going to dare me to kill a prize Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command recruit,” he yelled, then looked back at Mom, “because Gloria Deedham couldn’t take someone shitting on her porch and kills herself?”
“Commander,” the voice called out, and I heard Jessup, still with his gun out and pointed at Prendergast, say, “Mrs. Dillard.”
“Say it!” Mom screamed, and it seemed her arms were out even stiffer now.
“Fuck you and your peashooter,” he said. “You’re a piece of trash and always will be.” He leaned toward Mom, his head away from the crook at Tabitha’s neck, and for an instant Tabitha leaned away from him, the barrel of his gun no longer at her temple. “So I fucked you when you were passed out in a trailer a hundred years ago. So I—”
“Now,” Jessup said, and I saw Prendergast’s forehead burst, the shot from somewhere else.
The world was silent a moment. Nothing moved.
Mom stood with the gun out, as did Jessup.
Tabitha still leaned away, her eyes still squinted shut above the band of duct tape at her mouth.
Five still trembled, and Unc, not ten feet from me and still on his knees, took in a breath.
And Prendergast, his eyes open and mouth open too, hung in the air a moment, before him a mist of red mixed with bits of matter like a cold breath out in the frozen depths of hell. In this same instant his arms fell limp from Tabitha, and he collapsed into the hull.
Mom dropped the gun in the next moment, and I saw her look at her arms, the spray of blood on her, and then she screamed, Jessup beside her and holding her, and now here was a sailor kneeling beside me in blue and black and gray digital camo, Kevlar and helmet, an M4 on his shoulder.
Harmon.
He nodded at me, and I saw in his gloved hands what looked like nothing more than pruning shears. He reached behind me, cut off in a second the Zip Cuffs, then snipped the duct tape at the back of my neck.
Then he stood, went to Unc, did the same thing, but helped him peel the tape away from his mouth. He patted Unc’s back once, said something to him, then went to Five and did it again.
And now here were more sailors, a swarm of them in from the dark beyond the trees and into this light they’d brought in themselves, lights off the back of four or five MRAPs backed up on either side of the house and hidden behind bushes and trees, all these sailors in BDUs and helmets and Kevlar and carrying M4s, and I watched while Unc finally stood, and while Five turned from Coburn’s body, around it now a cordon of sailors, and dropped to his knees, touched his face to the grass. Still he wept.
“Huger?” Unc called. He’d lost his Braves cap in all this, a suspender down off one shoulder. Somewhere, too, was his walking stick, but not anywhere here.
Beyond him, down at the boat, I could see sailors standing with Mom, a blanket already across her shoulders. And sailors were up in the boat, helping Tabitha out of it now, the tape away from her mouth and cuffs off, and sobbing as she stepped down off the hull, sailors helping her the whole way.
And I saw come out of the trees, there to
my right down at the waterline of the yard, yet one more sailor, and saw at the same moment he emerged Jessup peel away from the sailors surrounding Mom and Tabitha, start toward him.
The sailor had a rifle, different than the others. A sniper rifle: long barrel, thick scope.
The two met, nodded at each other, and the sailor reached up, slipped off his helmet.
Master-at-Ahms Stanhope.
I closed my eye, and saw a woman named Ellen smiling at him, her murdered for such a dishonorable act.
“Right here,” I finally answered Unc, “I’m right here,” though the words didn’t sound like me. They sounded like someone older, like someone sick and frail had said them.
I could open my eyes later, I knew. I could see things then.
But for now I kept the one that worked closed, and I tried to breathe, and tried. Unc stood next to me now, I could feel, and said, “You all right?”
Though I couldn’t see him, I knew his hand was out and looking for me. He didn’t know I was sitting, and I reached out in my own blindness to find his hand, squeezed it hard as I could. “I’m fine,” I said: that same pitiable voice.
Then Unc was on the ground beside me, and put an arm to my shoulder.
“We made it,” he said.
I thought to answer him, if there were any answer to give. I thought to try and put one word with another one, to speak them, to expend the air those words would end up needing. But the work seemed too much at this particular moment, and suddenly two other people—they were medics, identified themselves as such—were here with me, and now they were easing me to my back, talking to me, asking questions, and all of it seemed just fine with me.
Because we made it.
We finish dinner a little early, before us the picked-over carcass of a roasted chicken and remains of a bag salad Mom picked up at the Super Bi-Lo over on North Rhett.
A Thursday evening, Unc and Mom and me at the glass table off the kitchen, out the window a summer marsh, too many greens to name.
A Thursday evening. But we’re not headed for any poker game.