Bucky clears his throat and for the first time he sets his gun down on his lap. The move eases the tension, softening his shoulders and loosening the grip on him. Hughes breaths a sigh of relief, so hard that he can almost feel the stress flow out of him.
“We didn’t have an affair, not at all. But,” he pauses again and he leans his head against the window.
“What is it?”
“She came to see me on the night she was attacked.”
It strikes Hughes at first like a punch to the gut. Thick knuckles right to the gut. So he had lied to Hughes, offered a fib that wasn’t close to the truth. But why? What’s the point of lying about an affair? That will do nothing but incriminate you.
“So why lie?”
“You were bound to find hard or DNA there, something. I had to lie. I couldn’t let you all know she came that night. If anything, that’s going to make me look guilty. Really guilty. And Mary’s not one for telling the truth. I’ve told you before. The woman lies. Big time. She’s got a lot of demons, or skeletons. Whatever.”
“So what happened?”
Bucky directs Hughes down another few blocks and then tells him to drive all the way to the end of the road. They’ll arrive at the destination on the left.
He finally answers when they swing around the corner.
“She came to me. She said she and Shawn had been fighting all day, just yelling at each other all night, horrible fight. One of the worst. And then she told me that he was leaving her. That he was leaving town and going far away. She said he was going to drive until he reached the other shore, just to get some space and restart his life.”
Hughes nods as he swerves around the corner. Such an event makes sense. And it confirms a truth that sends relief floating up his body, from his feet to the tip of his head.
Shawn didn’t kill Mary after all.
“She went home and I thought that was the end of it,” Bucky begins again. The relief drains out of Hughes, down the drain and into the sewer of lost hopes. She went home again. To Shawn. “But then she called me when she got home and so I had to rush over to make sure everything was okay?”
“And? And what did you see? What happened when you went over?”
“We’re here.”
Hughes slowly edges his foot against the brake and the car rolls to a stop. They’re in a neighborhood that’s unlike the well-to-do suburbs on the other end. These houses are beaten down, chipping and yellowing from old age and years gone by. The lawns are dry and lightly browned. Grass stands tall. Hughes expects a tumbleweed to roll by. One of the homes is painted with graffiti and gang symbols.
Somehow they arrived on the wrong side of town.
“This is it,” Bucky says, pointing his gun at the home to his right.
Hughes eyes it suspiciously. It’s familiar, but he can’t figure out why. He knows it, but like it’s from a distant dream that he’s long since forgotten.
The screen door that guards the home opens and a man steps out. He’s dressed for work, even though his shift has long since ended. Even Hughes knows that. He reaches for the mailbox that hangs to the right of his door and retrieves a stack of envelops. He disappears back into the home.
“That right there is Officer Samson. And he’s the man who framed your son.”
California
A Love Never Found
It’s morning. A sun ray hits his face. Slaps it with a soft pink light from the cotton candy mash of glass from outside. The sun sprinkles into his eye and wakes him immediately.
Waking up in Lowell is always like this. His eyes fall upon his ancient desk with rusting golden handles. Papers lay scattered on the desktop, haphazardly placed as though he had played a game of 52 Pickup with them the night before. His cell phone buzzes on the corner of the table. No way he’s answering it this early in the morning.
Where’s Mary?
She should be here next to him, nestled in the bed, covered in the cloudy bed covers. He rolls to his right, the soft mattress below a cloud to pull him toward bliss. No one sleeps beside him. His skin itches with loneliness. Mary should be here. She’s always here in the morning time.
Mary and her wondrous face. That dark black hair — so dark that it turns blue with the fading sunlight. A sweet smile that entrances him, captures the moment. The love he feels for her drifts within him like a driver through the fog, searching for an end destination, stuck in the in-between, trapped in a world that remains as much a mystery as love itself.
“Mary?” he asks.
And there’s no answer. Why would there be? Even if she was there, she wouldn’t answer. The last time they saw each other, they fought, howling like wolves in the night. The memories make him shake.
Reprieve can come from wiping the memories clean, and yet that’s a taller order than he imagines. You can’t just wipe away an entire lifetime of memories from your mind. You can’t do a week’s worth, either. Not a day, week, month, year, decade. Memories have a mind of their own. Some memories last a second. Others stay a lifetime.
His feet shiver from the cold floor beneath him. The floor protests. He cracks his neck and looks around the room. Home in the Lowell again.
Only he’s not in Lowell. He hasn’t been for awhile.
His phone rings. It’s Brandon again. Nothing like the devil to wake you up from peaceful rest.
He doesn’t want to answer, and he doesn’t plan to answer, either. He shoves his phone down onto the bed, burying the dings and dongs of the cliche ringtone underneath a pillow. Shut it up and leave it alone. Avoid it at all costs. Don’t come back.
He dresses quickly in the same old clothes, just a pair of straight-legged jeans and a v-neck white t-shirt that’s a little wrinkly. An iron would make it a little cleaner and fix his own appearance so he won’t look like a homeless person. Although, in a sense, he is homeless. Without a home and alone on the road. Sometimes, and it’s really the last week that has done this, he forgets that he’s on the run. Memories of his home lay behind a thick fog. California isn’t his home, and none of his friend are here. This is a temporary sanctuary, and all the devils are here.
He won’t let another phone call stop him from seeing Cassie.
The bell chimes when he walks into the diner. Thankfully Cassie waits for him at the bar. Well, he hopes she’s waiting for him. She has a book out, open to about the midpoint, and her eyes course the page, shifting from one side to the other. Back and forth, back and forth. Either she’s speed reading or she’s just a good reader. A smile crosses Shawn’s face. She’s angelic. A spiritual wave floats through him. A buzz climbs his arms and warms his mind. He sips the sweet nectar of her presence. He’s tasted the hardest spirits, but nothing numbs him more than her.
He walks up to her and knocks twice against the cool diner table.
“Knock knock.”
Her eyes stay on the page. Her right leg shakes.
“Cassie, I’m sorry.”
She turns in her chair, the book held firmly in her grasp. She rolls her shoulders, like she’s dusting his comment right off.
“Hey, hey,” he says, taking the seat right next to her, leaning his left side against the cool steel of the breakfast bar. “I’m really sorry. My friend really needed help. And you don’t have to worry, okay. It’s over, it’s done with and I’m here today to pay all my attention to you, okay?”
The book snaps shut. She slams it on the table. The fork laying on the napkin beside her coffee rattles. He whips his head around to see if anyone’s notice. They haven’t. They’re in their own little worlds, bubbles blocked from reality.
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure about what?”
“Are you sure that this is over? Like, can you look me in the face and tell me right now that you’re not going to go running to one of your old friends when they need help?”
The right answer stares at him the face. Obviously, any man worth his salt tells his concerned girlfriend that he won’t involve himself in an
y and all forthcoming dangers. He’ll be the best man he can be for her. But the other side of him, the selfish and cold side, sees fire and rage. A protest against her lines the street.
Loyalty doesn’t come cheap. It comes from time well spent with people from your past. Loyalty costs your time in the now and in the past. You can’t claim to be loyal to someone you don’t speak to anymore. You have to maintain a relationship, like a prime vehicle you want to keep until your last day. If you let your car fall apart — don’t refill the oil, don’t rotate the tires, never take it out of the garage for a night on the town — you’re going to see it fall apart. Slowly it’ll rust away and be nothing but a block of forgotten hopes and dreams. Same for friendships. If you let those friendships fall apart, they become nothing but framed photos in your head. Until they’re gone. Until your friends become the forgotten. Life only offers you a select amount of friends. Best to take care of them when you’re given the chance.
“But what if they need me? What if they need help? I can’t just leave my friends alone. Look, where I come from, friendship is like family. Loyalty is so important. And that’s how I feel about the people from my past. I have to stick with them.”
Her eyes find the floor and he can see the gears turn. The thought floats through her mind. Her gaze meets his again.
“Shawn, you and I have talked a lot about our pasts and the issues we went through, and I just don’t know if I’m comfortable with your dark past coming into your present, you know?”
“It’ll be fine. It was just my friend Brandon. He was here for a minute, but now he’s gone. I’m not going to be helping him in the future, I know it. He’s done, it’s over.”
“Yeah, I know,” she begins, shuffling in her seat. “I just,” she pauses. Her eyes find the book, then the coffee and then, at last, Shawn. “I just didn’t anticipate on us happening. I really didn’t think I’d fall for someone so soon and I just don’t want to ruin it, you know? I don’t want our pasts coming into our lives and reshaping us. We’ve both had terrible relationships and lives before this and I think we just need to keep those hidden.”
The brightness floods into the dark. Her guidance acts as a light through the fog, bringing him out behind closed doors without a window into reality. She’s right. Of course she’s right. It stings to hear that he has to let his friends go, but the antidote to the venom will provide a sweet release. Brandon and any of his Lowell friends only present trouble. Darkness and danger loom with them. A world he wishes to forget remains in sight. To truly move on, he needs to leave it behind. Drive past the fog into clear skies of the future.
This is the end, isn’t it? The end of their relationship. The growing seed of love does not become a fully bloomed flower. It stalls before it begins.
Unless he fixes it. Unless he pours honest and trust into the dirty, awakening the seed into a new life.
“Okay,” he says, laying his hand upon her knee. “I’ll let them all go. I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t think we’d happen, either,” he says, hardly believing it even now, just about a week into their romantic foray, an event neither saw something nor anticipated. “I mean, I just don’t want to let you go. No matter what happens next I just don’t want to lose you over something really stupid, you know?”
Her eyes tell him everything. They open up and water rushes toward the front. Her eyes would have poured tears in another environment, probably one more private. Instead she frowns, but it’s really a smile. Rueful and beautiful. She’s upset yet happy, worried yet excited. She reaches across the bar and wraps her arms around him, tugging tightly, almost ripping his body apart from the tug.
She pulls away. Their eyes fall upon each other. His lips meets hers. Coffee filters into his mouth and it wakes him. Though he’s not sure if that’s actually the spark between them. One kiss turns into another. A quick shift and they’re kissing continuously.
Her embrace takes him to another world. That’s been happening a lot lately. He floats away from the tough diner chair into a clouded fog before he emerges into a familiar place. It’s a tree out by the railroad tracks, back home in Lowell. The train squawks as it takes off, chugging along down the tracks, long gone toward Boston.
The shade from the tree covers him. It’s midsummer. You can’t really tell the time in a dream, let alone realize the season. The wind breaths and the trees flow with the breath, swaying back and forth. The smell of grass lingers around him. The blurry fog slowly thins and his world, his memory, his dream becomes as clear as day. He’s under the tree, and a young woman sits beside him. Not Mary. Not Cassie. But Sam.
Sam from the eighth grade classes. Sam the girl who broke his heart and yet inspired him to feel love. The same feelings of young love tingle and rise up his body. He remembers now what it feels to be hopeless and yet in love. Fretting the worst and yet hoping for the best. Unsure about what the true nature of relationships and yet seeking them anyway. Their eyes meet and she smiles.
“It’s okay,” she says, laying her hand upon his. “You can let me go. You can let me go.”
Did he ever really have her? They never went on dates back in the younger grades. Activities like that didn’t exist back in those days. And yet somehow she stuck around in his mind, waiting for them.
Everything is familiar. He’s supposed to talk to her, receive her blessing for the coming shift in his life. Like he couldn’t actually find another true love until he finally said goodbye to her.
It says something about Mary.
It says something about Cassie.
It says something about Shawn.
Our past stays with us, whether we want it to or not. Cassie asks him to let go of his past, to move on and stick with the present. Not to fall into the dark pit of a world gone by, but to embrace the new. To find a new path forward. And yet he didn’t want to. Until now. When his past gave him the blessing. When his past said it was okay to leave it behind. Drive through the fog and emerge into a new world.
Someone clears their throat. Their lips unlock and they turn. Drool dripping down their cheeks, they stare ahead at the waiter. A notepad waits patiently in his hand, a pen ticks against his wrist. His arms cross against his chest.
“Are you ready?”
Chaos
The brief time spent in college, a local community college towards the western end of Massachusetts, Shawn had learned about chaos theory. He didn’t remember everything about it, since, well, college wasn’t really his ‘thing’ and wasn’t an activity he planned to exercise long. But the theory went something along the lines of one simple flap of a butterfly’s wing can affect a typhoon on the other side of the world. His professor taught the class using that example, and Shawn disregarded it immediately. One flap of a wing and a disaster strikes another country?
Not possible.
But the more Shawn thought about it, the more he realized how true the theory was. One simple action, the tiniest of thoughts or movements, can grow into something larger, and soon a massive change or activity overshadows the earth. A man in Lowell gets an idea to drive away from home, he arrives in California, he meets a girl, his friend comes back to town, and soon, disaster strikes for both him and the girl. The singular, solitary thought of driving across the country affected someone else entirely absent from the initial picture.
Disaster strikes, hard and swift.
Cassie and Shawn aren’t done at the diner when disaster comes for them. They sit at the bar, lightly touching hands against smoking cups of coffee, the scent of eggs and bacon continuously lingering around them. The door bell chimes, a welcoming door to both the pleasant and the painful. Commotion unravels toward the front of the restaurant. A gasp here, a shriek there. Someone’s feet drag against the floor. Like a wave against a calm breeze, the reactions slowly wade towards the back of the restaurant. Cassie and Shawn pick their heads up when the reaction reaches them, and that’s when their eyes fall upon a man in a stained wh
ite v-neck. Splotches of red Kool-aid run rampant across the shirt. Shawn knows the red circles are no sugary drink. The man’s hair is disheveled, a bloody mess. A pale face with purple plums on the eyes. Shopping bags hang off of him.
No one recognizes the man. Unknown and foreign to them. Though if they have any knowledge of music or pop culture, his face becomes recognizable. Well, maybe not. He’s usually dolled up. Now he’s a doll who’s been tossed into a garbage pin, rolled over in excrement, dried off in a clothes dryer.
But Shawn recognizes the man. He knows him a little too well. It’s Brandon. Not the Brandon from his childhood. A weaker, broken down Brandon. Not the Brandon who sang at talent shows, carried a guitar around in high school, hosted rock out parties for students from all walks of life. He’s not the Brandon who worked his ass off to get the top. He’s an unraveling Brandon, a ball of yarn thinning out. A soap bar that’s been used too many times. Cracked and dry skin.
What in the world is going on?
You can’t pick out the moments that change your life forever. You don’t know when they’ll happen either. Stuff happens. Stuff happens and you either roll with it or let it roll all over you. And then your life changes, and whatever chance you had at succeeding or making a new life for yourself gets swept under the rug by the power of fate.
Chaos theory, in a sense.
Shawn hurries to the front of the restaurant. His fork falls to the floor and clatters against the tiles. He clasps Brandon on the stomach and tries his best to push him out the door, but the thick celebrity remains at a standstill, unmoved and flat.
“Brandon, what’s going on man?”
A manager arrives.
“Are you boys alright?”
If Shawn had a cent for every time a cop or manger asked him that, he wouldn’t be in this scenario. He might be in California, though, hanging around in Hollywood hills kicking back in Calabasas.
“Yeah, we’re fine, we’re just going to go,” Shawn says, coherently and straight-laced. Pretend you’re a nerd, Shawn. Pretend you’re a geek.
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