by Barry Lyga
Pop took the phone.
“Where?”
It was Mr. Laird.
“Where is my brother, Dean? You wrote the postcards, right? So where did he really go?”
Dad finally looked up, gazing at Elayah’s father with helplessness radiating from his eyes. “I swear to God, Marcus, I don’t know.”
1986: KIM
Bearing shovels and a pickax, they made their way up the hill that morning. Jay had the gait of a condemned prisoner who knows he’s guilty but believes he should have gotten away with it anyway. He’d been suspended, and the rumor was that his father, in a political move to preserve his board role, was pushing for an expulsion in exchange for the county agreeing not to press charges against his son. But the singularly dour expression on Jay’s face curbed her desire to ask him about it.
Marcus carried the pickax as well as, in a moment of chivalry, Kim’s shovel. Jay hadn’t even offered.
Dean and Brian waited for them at the top of hill, the time capsule standing on one end between them. Dean leaned against it precariously.
“Was it heavy?” Kim asked.
Dean and Brian shrugged. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”
Brian flexed a little. Whatever.
“This tree?” Brian pointed.
Dean yawned as he consulted a sheet of paper. “Yep.”
Brian unsheathed his deer knife and carved a capital B in the bark of the tree as high up as he could reach.
While Brian carved, Marcus punched Jay in the shoulder and asked the question Kim had been avoiding: “Hey, man. How’s it going? What’s new with the police and the school and all that?”
“I don’t know. My dad’s working something out.” Jay’s expression was vacant and distant. A stare into an abyss that seemed more welcome than threat.
“Hey,” Dean said to Marcus, scouting around them. “Where’s Antoine?”
Marcus flashed a grim, angry mask. “Who the hell knows? I don’t think he came home last night. He’s been sneaking out lately. He’s…” Marcus licked his lips. “Can I tell you guys something? He’s been acting real weird lately. Not just the not-talking thing, either.”
“Should we wait for him?” Brian asked, and Dean nodded.
“Look, he’s been checked out for a while,” said Marcus. “If he’s not here, it’s because he doesn’t want to be here. Let’s just bury the damn thing. I think he might’ve hopped a bus to New York. To see our cousin again. Mom is sitting around at home, waiting for a call from my aunt.” He shook his head. “He’s an idiot.”
Jay grunted something like agreement. “Is it all sealed up?” He jerked his head at the time capsule.
Dean thumped its top. “Yep.”
Kim frowned. “I thought we were going to finish the inventory first,” she said.
“Oh, come on,” Dean said. “We have enough.” He brandished the piece of paper they’d used to list the things they added to the time capsule, then folded it and tucked it into his pocket. “I’ll stash it in the yearbook room so we can get to it when the time comes.”
Brian rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, man. Twitchy said—”
“Who cares what Twitchy said?” Jay growled. His eyes had sunken into black-and-purple hollows and his hair was limp. “Let’s just bury this thing.”
No one spoke, the five of them gazing around at one another, the woods behind them, the sun, the sky. And then, with a shrug, Dean took up the pickax and swung the first blow at the earth.
EP. 013
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS
INDIRA BHATTI-WATSON, HOST:
This is No Time Like the Present, an NPR podcast. I am Indira Bhatti-Watson, reporting from Finn’s Landing, Maryland.
(SOUND BITE OF MUSIC)
BHATTI-WATSON:
Today we’re coming to you from the steps of the courthouse in Finn’s Landing, the county seat of Lowe County, Maryland, where the state’s attorney has just announced charges being filed against Dean Malcolm Fitzroy, the sheriff of Canterstown and the man who had been conducting the investigation into the attack on Elayah Laird.
Late last night, word came that the sheriff had confessed to—among other things—being the individual who broke into the Lairds’ garage, allegedly to steal evidence from the time capsule. This, because Fitzroy also confessed to having killed Bradley Simon Gimble in 1986, then faking Gimble’s death as a drunk driving accident. The crime scene was bulldozed in early 1987, so no evidence has been recovered, but the sheriff is cooperating with authorities.
Details are still sketchy, but we have learned from sources that the evidence in this case comprises items from the time capsule, ironically unearthed by a group including Fitzroy’s own teenaged son. The letter that drove Martin Chisholm to attack Elayah Laird was placed by someone else, entirely coincidentally.
Keep listening after this word from our sponsor for much, much more.
THE PRESENT: DEAN
He was given the third holding cell from the door to the detention area. With typical cop irony, they all called it “The Suite.” Someone had measured it once—it was six inches larger in one direction, and the single barred window somehow let in more light than the other cells’.
It was a kindness and a consideration Dean knew he did not merit.
The cot was as uncomfortable as detainees had always complained. Dean sat on the edge of it and watched the shadows of the window bars as they ticked the minutes away, leaning farther and farther east as the sun traveled west.
And so it ended, as it had to end. His entire life had been one big cover-up, even becoming sheriff in order to keep a lid on his crime. He never thought anyone would actually dig up the damn thing.
He never imagined his own child would be the one to unravel it.
It had all gone wrong. Not that last night with Antoine—long before that. It had gone wrong when he was born, when Antoine was born moments after Marcus. When Jay was born, and Kim, and Brian. It had gone wrong when the world threw them together as they were, then told them not to be who they were, to suffer in silence, and to never ever show weakness.
And someone died. And families fell apart. And Black Lightning… forked.
“Uh, Sheriff?” It was Riley, one of the deputies, standing just on the other side of the bars.
“I don’t think that’s my name anymore,” Dean told him.
Riley’s mouth gaped and shut, gaped and shut, like an astonished goldfish. “Right, sir. Right. Uh, there’s someone to see you.”
“No visitors,” Dean told him sternly. “You know the rules.”
“Yeah, well…” Riley shrugged and went to the door that opened out into the rest of the building. He walked out and ushered Wally in.
Dean clenched his jaw, holding back tears. Wally was not so successful; tears streamed unfettered down his face.
“Goddamn it, Dean,” he said as he stood before the cell. “Goddamn it.”
Everything Dean could think of to say danced unused on the tip of his tongue. Could he say he was sorry? Sure. He had already. It was useless. Could he say, “You were never supposed to know”? Yes. And what of it? Nothing he could say meant anything now. No words could mend the damage.
“I can’t believe you.…” Wally sniffled and pulled at his hair. “How could you do this? How could you?”
It was an accident. More words he could say. More words that wouldn’t matter.
Dean stood and walked to the front of the cell. He wrapped a hand around one of the bars.
I love you. The biggest words to say. And still meaningless.
“Do you remember when we met?” Wally asked.
Of course he did. One of the first commercial flights after 9/11. They’d ended up seatmates on a flight out of BWI, bound for Cleveland. The flight hummed with nervous energy and black humor. For once, no one wanted to ignore the person next to them. Dean was a deputy sheriff, heading to a symposium on community relations. Wally was interviewing for a chef’s position at a seafood restaurant.
“Who goes to Cleveland for seafood?” he’d asked somewhat rhetorically as they chatted, staving off the fear with comity.
By the time the short flight landed, they’d exchanged names and numbers. They met up in Cleveland that night for a drink, then Dean puckishly suggested seafood for dinner.
Wally tanked the interview. Maybe on purpose. Dean never asked.
“I knew from the moment I saw you,” Wally told him, fighting for breath and composure. “I knew you were the one. The love of my life. I knew we would be together. That we would marry. Even though it wasn’t legal yet. I thought to myself, I’m gonna make it legal if I have to go to law school and get a degree and get on the Supreme Court myself. I will marry this man. I knew all of that. The first time we met.”
He said this all looking over Dean’s shoulder, staring into the shadows of the cell. Now he finally fixed his gaze on Dean.
“I didn’t know you would break my heart,” Wally said, choking on his own words. “I didn’t know you’d already broken my heart before I even met you. How could you do it? How could you promise me a life? How could you bring us a child?”
How?
They’d been kids, and they’d thought nothing they did mattered. They’d been told it didn’t matter. But thirty-five years go by and suddenly it all does matter, just as you were starting to forget it, just as you were thinking maybe it was a dream you’d had once, long ago, in another place, when you were another person.
But you were the same person after all. All along.
You have this notion that your life doesn’t start until you say it does. That nothing counts until you look in the mirror and decide you’ve grown up. But everything you did, you did. Everything you said, you said. It’s all real and it all matters, to someone, if not to you.
If, Dean wondered, he’d been able to see the future, to see the parades and the court decision and the pride… would it have mattered? Nothing had really changed. Except everything had changed.
He didn’t know.
All of that, true.
None of it answered Wally. Not in the way that mattered.
Wally put his hand over the end of Dean’s fingers, the parts that wrapped around the bars. He didn’t squeeze Dean’s hand, just laid his hand there.
“I’ll always love you. And for what you’ve done, I will hate you until the day I die.”
Later, despite the regulations, Riley returned. This time with Liam.
Dean began to tremble at the sight of his son. Liam’s eyes were sunken, bloodshot. It had been only sixteen hours since his arrest, but Liam looked as though he hadn’t slept for weeks.
It was one thing to see Wally. Wally was an adult. Wally had lived a life of joys and disappointments, cares and troubles.
Not Liam. Liam was…
“Did you think you’d get away with it?” Liam asked abruptly, his jaw set.
Dean fought against the reflex borne of years of struggle with Liam. “Did I think…? Liam, I did get away with it. For thirty-five years.”
“Because you’re always the smartest one in the room, right, Dad?”
Dean took a deep breath. Counted to ten. He knew he needed to do this when he spoke to Liam, but in the moment—in the fire of the present—he often forgot.
“It didn’t start out like that. Trying to get away with it. I… I really… I panicked. And Antoine had this great idea. I thought it would work. But as soon as you kids said you were going to find the damn thing and dig it up… I knew. Deep down, I knew I couldn’t stop it all from coming out, no matter how hard I tried.”
They glared at each other in silence. Dean remembered to count to ten this time. And then he did it again. Because this next part was risky.
“The tape, Liam.”
Liam startled as though wakened from a deep sleep. “What? What about the tape?”
“You have to destroy it.”
The command and the implication hung between them like gun smoke.
“Dad…”
“Listen to me.” Dean pressed against the bars with urgency. “That tape is the only evidence connecting Antoine to Brad’s death. No one who heard it last night is going to talk. They just won’t. Peej can fall back on attorney-client if he has to. Sure as hell none of the rest of them will say anything to hurt Antoine.”
“It’s been thirty—”
“There’s no statute of limitations for what we did!” Dean couldn’t hold back the explosion of anger. Why couldn’t Liam just understand? “Second-degree or negligent homicide, it doesn’t matter. He’s still on the hook as long as that tape exists.”
“He didn’t kill anyone, Dad. You did.” Liam seemed to take a savage satisfaction in saying it.
“Doesn’t matter. He covered it up. He’s an accessory after the fact, and he’s in just as much jeopardy as I am. He’s just as culpable… unless you destroy that tape.”
Liam said nothing. He pondered, his expression unreadable.
Tears, then. Dean didn’t expect them, but there they were, gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Liam, listen to me. Antoine is still out there somewhere. And wherever he is, I don’t want him to wake up to US Marshals kicking down his door one morning. I did this. He tried to save me. I deserve punishment. He doesn’t. If you destroy the tape, he’s free. Like he always wanted. Give that to him.”
“Where did he go?” Liam asked. “You have to tell the Lairds. They deserve the truth.”
“I don’t know where he is, son. I hope wherever it is, he’s happy.”
Liam snorted at the sentiment. “Then why the postcards, Dad? Why even bother?”
Dean sighed. “You don’t… He was just gone, Liam. He left nothing behind. He vanished. And his family was so distraught. A week went by. Then two. And they thought he was dead, and they were so… I thought that I could at least… I could at least let them know he was alive. And maybe if they thought he was really far away, they’d stop looking.
“But even there, I screwed up. That first one. I bought a blank and sent it to my pen pal in Mexico. Then I thought about it and instead I started sending him money and had him buy the postcards and stamps. He’d send me the postcards, I’d write them, send them back for him to mail. I told him it was a school project. It’s not like I was a master criminal, Liam. I was a scared kid doing my best to pretend everything was fine. Just a kid who kicked off something he couldn’t control.”
And it was true, but it also didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The truth was out and even that didn’t matter, because it didn’t fix things. It didn’t heal things. He’d thought he could spare the Lairds a specific pain, and instead all he’d done was inflict another kind for thirty-five years. And then came the original hurt, like a boomerang returning through time. To say nothing of the Gimbles, who had left town shortly after Brad’s “accident,” but who now were lining up their lawyers.
It was a chilling sort of funny that in the years since, he’d thought less and less of Brad Gimble, and more and more of Antoine. Brad’s death meant damn little to him compared with Antoine’s disappearance. The law had a different view.
“All this because you had a boyfriend.” Liam shook his head. “You had a boyfriend, and some jackass was going to maybe, possibly, out you to your girlfriend. Jesus, Dad! So what?”
“It was—”
“Don’t tell me it was different back then!”
“It was!” Dean roared, lunging at the bars. Despite the steel between them, Liam took a step back. “It was different! You got to grow up in a world where people argued over whether it should be called gay marriage or marriage equality. I grew up in a world where gay kids got beaten to death!”
“That’s bull, Dad!” Liam shouted, now leaning in close enough that Dean felt his breath. “They’re still beating up gay kids. It’s not something that only used to happen back then.”
“The difference is that back then, no one gave a damn. You don’t understand. In 1986, the only thing in this town wors
e than a Black faggot was the white faggot who was in love with him.”
Liam staggered backward as though struck. He’d never heard his father speak that word, other than the time—as a very young boy—when Dean had lectured him on certain words and why not to use them. And this is one of the worst, Dean had said, and told him the word and its history and why it was so very, very bad, and why it should never be used. Especially not in this house.
To his shame, Dean took an almost barbarous pleasure in shocking his son this way. He’d tried for so long to have the final word with Liam, to have his son finally capitulate and admit, Yes, Dad, you know some things I don’t know. You know some important things. I’m listening, Dad. The world is serious, Dad. I get it. I understand.
The wounded, dumbstruck look on Liam’s face was, Dean figured, the closest he would ever get.
He’d never understood why he and Liam had such contention between them. Shouldn’t a blissful and respectful relationship with his child have been the natural reward for the long, hard-fought slog to have a child with Wally? The adoption paperwork and legal negotiations. The surrogate interviews. The endless rounds of artificial insemination. The string of checks and credit card charges that depleted his life savings. And then one day, he’d gotten the call and rushed to the hospital. Wally had arrived an hour later, still in his chef’s whites, spattered with bone broth and tomato seeds. Liam was born after six hours of labor at 3:22 in the morning, a squalling, howling ball of outrage and pitiableness, shivering, blue hands and feet, wrinkled. Scraggly black locks of hair that would eventually fall out, to be replaced by blond. His eyebrows were invisible, his lips folded in except when he screamed his disapproval at being expelled from the comfort and safety of the surrogate.
And Dean had—much to his shock and pleasure—fallen in love instantly. And hard. They had agreed that since Dean was the donor, Wally would get to hold the child first. But in that moment, Wally had put a hand on Dean’s shoulder and said, “Take him, Dad.”