“Dad, I’m in trouble. And I need your help.”
Peter’s face fell. “What is it, Scotty?”
“I need a space for some men, some … dangerous men who are not my friends but who need to meet with each other.”
“Yes?”
“They need—I need to provide them with a space where none of them will feel threatened or ambushed. They need a place where they can speak freely to each other, where they know that no one is watching or listening to them.”
“Right. Scott—”
“Hold on. I don’t want for there to be any miscommunication here. I need you to have a full picture of what is going on. I don’t want to make any trouble for you or for the Brethren—”
“The Young Brethren.”
“Okay, sure.”
“‘The Brethren’ are a different thing. On the East Coast.”
“In any event, having these guys here on your farm could cause trouble for you. But there’s also a good chance that it won’t, and a lot of good could come out of the meeting if it goes well.”
“What kind of good?”
“Very good. An end to recent violence. Two men who are being held captive would be set free. There’s a lot at stake. Money, too, so long as we’re being honest.”
“I see.” Peter winced momentarily at the mention of money, then returned to the blank kindness that was his default expression. He reached out and put his hand over Scott’s.
“Scott, without judgment, can I ask you—what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Dad, I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s—it’s gang stuff.”
“Gang stuff?”
“I made a mistake. I was trying to hold onto the house, and there was no way to do it honestly. I tried something to buy time, and it backfired. I’m trying to fix it now.”
“Do you owe someone money?”
“No. I mean, like, yes. I do, but that’s not exactly the problem. I owe money in the same way everybody else does. This other problem, this is new.”
Peter allowed a second’s worth of frustration to pass across his eyes and brow before calming again. “Scotty, you have made a mistake, but it’s not the one you think.”
“Dad, honestly, look. I don’t have time for spiritual riddles. What I need—”
“You equate that house with your mother, and she’s not there. Don’t get me wrong, she loved that house. Even when we were renting it, she cared for it like it was her own. Her garden—you remember her flowers? She planted a hibiscus tree when you were—you must have been ten, eleven? She loved that house, Scott, but that house wasn’t her. It isn’t her.”
“We look at these things very differently, Dad.”
“Make me see.”
“I don’t think I can. I’m—I’m happy for you, for what you’ve found here. But that’s just it, in a way. I mean, moving forward, it takes having someplace to land. I don’t know what’s left for me beyond that house. Our home. You travel lightly, Dad, and I respect that about you. I need something to be, to hold onto, or else everything will scatter to the winds.”
Peter nodded and smiled and turned and watched the field for a few moments.
“Sometimes—” Scott began. “Sometimes It’s like being trapped in a box; I can’t breathe. The weight of it, the forever-ness. Two years, Dad. I mean—don’t you miss her?”
“Always,” Peter said, smiling, turning a wet face toward Scott and tightening his grip on his son’s hand. “She was so happy you were gone while she disappeared, Scott, but that’s what happened. She was eighty-one pounds when she died. Your mother, who thought that anyone who stopped at one hamburger must have a flu.” Scott laughed, doing his best to hold his weeping in his chest. “She was my life and she lost her physical form entirely, and that’s when I decided that nothing solid could matter. That every important aspect of our humanity, built with love in God’s image, takes place on an immaterial plane.”
“And that’s fine, Dad. It’s beautiful. But I don’t know.” Scott nodded, an affirmation unrelated to anything that he was thinking or saying. “You left me holding the bag. I don’t know any other way to say it. I wasn’t ready to let all that go.”
Peter nodded. He ran his hard, open hand down the side of his son’s soft cheek.
“The dining hall.”
“Sorry?”
“For your meeting. The dining hall would work. At nighttime, it’s quiet. There are no windows, it’s enclosed. Two different doorways, so hostile parties could enter from opposite sides, and neither need feel like they were in the other’s space. But I would like to be there.”
“No, that won’t—”
“You’re my son, and I will protect you by whatever meagre means I have to hand. This is a condition. You may not use the space otherwise.”
Scott thought for a moment. He stared out at the fields, thought again about how perfect it was, and considered that, even as a grown man, his father’s presence brought him comfort and a sense of safety, even if he couldn’t exactly say why anymore.
“Okay,” he said.
“Scott, no judgment. Have you joined a gang?”
Scott sat silently for a while.
“Scott?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
23
“Should we have guns?”
“Well, that’s a moot point, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Because we don’t fucking have guns.”
“Your dad’s rifle, though?”
“Jesus, this isn’t a chain gang, Par, for Christ’s sake. I can’t stand there with a rifle like it’s goddamn Cool Hand Luke.”
“No guns,” Scott said. “No guns. On them either. You guys search them before they enter the building. We’re responsible for their safety. They just need to see each other, exchange the money for the hostages.”
“Will I be picking up the hostages too?” asked Pardeep, with a sharp panic entering his voice. “Doesn’t that make me an accessory to the kidnapping?”
“I don’t—I’m not sure. Joe? You think they’d bring the hostages with them?”
Josiah’s eyes widened as he shook his head. “I have no idea what the expectation is.”
“Fuck it,” Scott said. “Either way, it’s not going to be a deal breaker. They each agreed to the terms. We’re there to keep things cool.”
“We’re non-aligned,” Pardeep smiled. Josiah shook his head impatiently.
“There’s fifteen thousand dollars for us out of this. Five for each of us.”
“Listen, Scotty,” Pardeep began. “About that—”
“No, that’s the split. Three ways. We’re a gang, or aren’t we?” Pardeep smiled again; Josiah kept a steady gaze. “Guys,” said Scott. “There are no words. I just—thank you.”
Pardeep nodded and hugged Scott, grabbed his keys, and left to pick up Nicky and Danny at the meeting place in Langley, the 1-2-3 Family Restaurant; Josiah would be picking up Mike and another UR in Maple Ridge, at a donut shop that also sold fried chicken. Neither side could know, in advance, where the summit would be taking place. Scott would drive straight there. It was close to half past eight, and the late August sun was already sinking. Josiah made his way to the door.
“Joe.”
“What?” he asked, turning.
“There is more than thank you.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
Josiah smiled without joy.
“Joe, after tonight, if that’s it—if you’re walking away from this friendship? I understand. It would kill me, but I would understand. It hasn’t been right, and it hasn’t been fair. And it hasn’t been right or fair in really big ways, ways that I know will be hard to forgive. I’m sure Par would feel the same way if he weren’t doling out general amnesty, so as not to get too hung up on what his parents were doing. You didn’t ask for any of this. And I—”
“Scott, that’s enough. You’re rambling. I get it.”
&nb
sp; “Right.”
“I have to go now. I’ll see you at your Dad’s.”
Pardeep’s wheels ground into the dry dirt and stones of the path leading to the farm, making rubbery popping sounds as he parked where Scott had told him to, then turned and indicated to the Da Silvas—just the Da Silvas, whom he had patted down on their way into the backseat, and no UR hostages—that although they were parked at this end of the dining hall, which could barely be made out in the country dark, they would be walking to the door on the other side.
“But look, I mean—you can see that we’re the first ones here besides Scott. That’s his car.”
“I don’t know what kind of car Scott drives,” said Danny Da Silva. “He was in this one when he came to my house.”
“Right,” Pardeep said. “Right. But that’s his car. I promise we’re good getting to the hall. I swear on my life—”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Pardeep swallowed.
“Listen, I mean, we can go through the entrance on this side—”
“Do you have the situation under control, or don’t you?”
Pardeep stared at Danny Da Silva in the rearview mirror, then decided that the best course of action was to leave the car and start walking. He didn’t see Danny smile after he did so. Pardeep turned on his phone’s flashlight and guided the two brothers down the dark, tidy path.
A few minutes later, Josiah pulled up between Pardeep’s car and Scott’s, with Mike and an older, less muscular, but likely just as heavy Rider named Frenchie in back.
“Everybody else is here,” Josiah said, the first words exchanged since Mike and Frenchie had entered the car at the donut shop. “And this is our door. But I need to search you guys before going in.”
“Fuck that,” said Frenchie, failing to elaborate. Mike, holding a large gym bag and a small backpack, each full of cash, on his lap, held Josiah’s gaze in the mirror’s reflection.
“Frenchie, buddy,” Mike said. “Those are the terms.”
“He’s not fucking touching me, hostie,” he said, his jowls barely moving.
“Shouldn’t it be a comfort to know that we’ve searched both sides before anybody went in?” asked Josiah.
“I look like I need comforting from you, slope?”
The silence in the car turned chippy, dangerous. Josiah seethed, and Mike seemed torn between embarrassment and tribal solidarity.
“You fucking assholes asked for this meeting,” Josiah said finally. “And that small bag in your friend’s hands, that’s already ours. You want to be a prick about it, turn the guys who belong to that bigger bag into my best friends, then keep acting like you’re scared of airport security. You’ll be pretty easy to pick off, waddling back up the highway to the donut shop, you fat white piece of shit.”
Frenchie bared his upper teeth at Josiah, then laughed without warmth and exited the car, raising his hands up in surrender, ready to be searched. Josiah waited a few long seconds before carrying out the frisk; he knew that if Frenchie could feel his hands shaking, it all would have been for nothing.
When the last of them entered the room, the Da Silvas stayed sitting, and the Clarks, father and son, stood and nodded.
“Who’s this?” asked Mike evenly, pointing at Peter with his free hand, the other lugging the bags.
“That’s my father, Peter. This is his place.”
Mike nodded, then took in the room, its walls hung with decorative quilts, its carved wooden peace sign, its large wooden cross.
“It takes a little bit of getting used to,” said Danny, as Mike, Frenchie, and Josiah sat at their own table, across the room from the Da Silva brothers and their escort, Pardeep. Scott and Peter sat at a third table, at the head of the room, holding court.
“I want to thank you guys for being here. Just being here, that’s a start. That’s a show of good faith,” said Scott. Everyone nodded. “And Mike, I see those bags. That’s good. We’re here tonight to squash this beef. Some very bad things have grown out of what should have been minor disagreements, handled between adults, between bosses. I’m going to speak frankly here,” Scott said, trying to still the catch in his voice, his heart trying to burst its way out of his chest with a broadsword. “Very frankly. There was some Mickey Mouse shit that should have been handled much sooner than it was, and now we’re in a place where the bigger problems that came out of that are threatening the professional atmosphere that we’re all trying to work in.”
“The butterfly effect,” Mike said.
“Sure,” said Scott.
“How so?” asked Nicky.
“Small things, like a butterfly flaps its wings, it makes an earthquake on the other side of the world.”
“How the fuck is that?” asked Nicky.
“I’d prefer,” said Danny, “for us to stop speaking in goddamn euphemisms and cryptograms. Our friends Wayson and Brody are dead. That’s not small.”
“And you’ve got Kevin and Patty, maudit sauvages!” yelled Frenchie. “And I’m still pulling pieces of fucking eight ball out of my ass, sacrifice.”
“Let’s everybody simmer down, all right?” Scott said, just as Mike’s face turned to him in angry confusion.
“Wait,” he said, and though Pardeep, Scott, and Josiah each knew what was coming, they still felt the dread knot of anxiety in their stomachs. “Where are Kevin and Patty?”
“They’re safe,” said Danny without reassurance.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means what I just said. They’re safe. You want them to stay that way, there’s a bag you’ve got for me, no?”
“Sure,” Mike said, nodding angrily, and reached for the bag at his feet. “I got a bag for you, motherfucker.” Mike stood now, pulling a glock from the side compartment of the gym bag and aiming it at Danny.
“Fuck,” said Josiah.
“Mike,” said Scott.
“Scott, I had your guarantee,” Danny said.
“They’re fucking dead, your friends, anything happens to us,” said Nicky. “And that’s only the beginning.”
“Goddamnit, Mike, you asked for this meeting. We had an agreement.”
“Then where are my boys? How is this the agreement? I’m going to paste this fucker to the wall.”
“It’s the worst thing, and the last thing, that you will ever do.”
“Motherfucker!”
“Fucking bitch!”
“Each of you boys is wrought in God’s image, each of you is born in sin and slavery, and each of you is redeemed in the love and brotherhood of Christ who died for your sins!”
The room fell silent as Peter stood, his hands outstretched, a beatific look on his face. Mike, still holding his gun on Danny, stared at Peter with a face that was desperately trying to figure out what the angles were.
“Dad,” Scott said. “Please?”
“Son,” said Peter. But he wasn’t talking to Scott. He was addressing Mike. “I’m not going to ask you if you believe in God. We men, we people—but let’s be honest, mostly we men—we’re so … silly that way, as though our own belief, what we know or don’t know, is the central fact of the universe. I don’t have to ask you if you believe in God any more than I would ask you if you believed in your own parents’ love for you—an echo of God’s own love for all of us, his children. I was a father to this boy here, at my side. And I held him with the same all-overcoming love that I know your own mother and father had when they held you. None of us grows enough or hardens enough to take that fatherly love out of God’s gaze upon us. The only cost of that eternal love, the only thing He asks us in return for it, his only condition for a love without conditions? Is that we try to show our tiny, imperfect human version of it toward all of his children. This man, sitting across the way from you? He is your brother. Take his life and, like Cain, you are taking the best part of your own.”
Mike slowed his breathing.
He took the gun off Danny.
He pointed it at Pet
er.
“No!” Scott shouted, but Peter pushed him down into his chair.
“Crazy fucking wacko,” Mike said. “You setting me up? I’ll ice you before anyone else.”
“I’m not afraid of your bullets.”
“Yeah? Why not? Because you’ve got a Bible in your breast pocket? How about I put it through your eyes then, instead?”
“That’s fine,” Peter said, his voice shifting out of the timbre of a sermon and into the tenor of a dad-joke. “I’ve got the Bible in my head.”
There was quiet in the room.
Frenchie laughed, then Danny laughed. Scott swallowed, and Peter smiled.
“Give me the gun, Mike,” said Scott. “It’s not too late for us to talk.”
“Sit the fuck down, Mike, calice,” said Frenchie. “You asked for the fucking meet. You packed the hostie cash in the bags.” Mike stayed standing, dropping the gun to his side.
“Here,” said Danny, staring at his phone, tapping out a message. “I’ve got my boys texting a photo of Patty and Kevin, safe and sound and waiting for you at a Starbucks in Whalley.” The phone dinged, and Danny passed it to Scott, who slowly took it over to Mike. Josiah and Pardeep exchanged terrified glances, silently begging the other to telegraph a plan. Mike stared at the phone. “After the meeting here, which you asked for, but which you are doing everything in your power to fuck up, if everything goes right from here on in, I send the big bag home with my brother. Scott leaves the small bag here with his father. Your friend goes home with Scott’s over there. And you, me, and Mr Clark will drive to that Starbucks together, and you will walk away with your friends.”
“And there will be peace upon the land,” Peter added.
Scott extended his hand softly, and Mike handed back the phone.
“Okay?” said Scott.
Mike looked down at him, back up at Danny, back over at Peter, and down at Frenchie. Frenchie gave a resigned nod, his face at peace, and Mike gave Scott the gun.
“The saviour said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger,’” said Peter. “For the rest of the meeting, let’s have snacks.”
Property Values Page 14