by Paul Griner
My Only Swerving
My phone vibrated again and I took it from my pocket. The fifth call from Lamont in an hour; this one I answered. High school graduation today! he said, his voice crackling with anger. Know what high school valedictorian Jayden Boone did?
I stopped by a window and held the phone away from my ear. Outside in a schoolyard kids were playing and yelling behind a brick wall, with joyous, indistinct voices. Springtime, green things growing. I breathed on the glass to fog it over.
Jayden read the names of every member of the class who graduated, Lamont said. And the names of every member of the class who didn’t. Three suicides, two car accidents, one late-night illness. And the shooter! He said his name! Tracy Letts.
Everybody processes trauma differently, I said. He’s a kid.
I don’t care if he’s a kid. Someone’s got to cancel this.
I wiped the glass clean. Three black cats sat poised on the brick wall, as still as owls. I didn’t remember them being there. I said, Brother. You have to let it go.
Oh no I don’t, he said. I’m not tapping out on this one.
I knew he wouldn’t. Lamont, I said. He’s just a boy. Let him take his path.
A boy all lined up for a lesson. His voice trembled with anguish.
I thought long and hard. I was in a hospital, for fuck’s sake. I could go back to the waiting room and tell Nash, who would make some calls, someone to stop Lamont, however briefly. But Nash was here for May, and she needed that. And however long a stay Nash might arrange for Lamont, once he was done with it, he’d start up again. Anger and revenge were bound around his neck and written on the tablet of his heart. I could alter his trajectory, but I couldn’t stop it.
I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the warm glass and listened to Lamont’s breathing. He was waiting for me to guide him in somehow from the dark, only he wouldn’t be guided home anymore; I could hang out all the lanterns I wanted but he was too far gone, all his navigating in the past. He’d found true north.
I’d been close to that. May too, it seemed. An armed torpedo that needed a new target for its tender mercies. The high school kid couldn’t be it, even Lamont knew that, which was why he called me. But what? Or where? Or really, who?
I could think of only one name. Was it a gift I was giving Lamont, or a prison sentence? Maybe I was fooling myself and I only wanted him to do what I couldn’t do myself, just another white guy getting a Black man to do his dirty work. Well, if it saved a kid, I could live with that, and I suspected Lamont could too. Our twined paths; that was why he’d called. He was probably thinking Kate, but Kate was off the table, so I’d give him something better, and then it was his choice to become the hawk-god or not. Perhaps steering his path to an adult was the path that I was being shown. I opened my eyes and said the name Dexter Fenchwood and my skin tingled.
Who’s that? Lamont asked.
Hold on, I said, and thumbed through my contacts. I’ll send you the link.
Good, he said. No peace for the wicked.
After, I felt like a god, the god Lamont had told me long ago I’d become, deciding who someone might go after, and wondered if that had once driven Kate. But my deceitful heart wasn’t happy with its new power, even if it meant Lamont might now emerge a free man from the sea into which he’d passed a slave.
Fevered and Fretful, Lord Knows I’d Like to Smile
May’s pale face against the sheets, haggard and remote, heartsick with hope deferred; there’s a reason we all hate hospitals. I rapped the pure white cast on her leg with my knuckles. How’d you know Kate was in Phoenix? I asked.
Wasn’t me, May said, and tried to scratch her cheek, but the wrist shackle stopped her short. I scratched it for her. Zhao did it, she said. Much better with computers than me. Some program that clarifies pictures. And he owed me.
For what?
Doesn’t matter. She waved her fingers dismissively, the shackle clacking. Remember the video where she’s supposed to be a US attorney? He lifted a name from the diploma and captured a jewelry store receipt for a necklace. With those two things, I tracked her down. I didn’t get to see her yet, but I will. After I get out.
I thought of Liam, long ago, violent and restrained, and bent and kissed her warm forehead, smoothed back her tangled hair. Don’t you realize? I said. The person we wanted to get? The person we wanted to kill? It was never Kate.
If it wasn’t, I drove all the way out here for nothing.
You got charged, I said. Transporting a loaded weapon across state lines, bringing a firearm to within one hundred yards of a government building. The person we were after died long before our son did. The day Liam was shot. Tracy Letts.
She turned her face to the window, to the woman on her swing. Back and forth in the blistering heat, skirt lifting and petticoats flying. Don’t, May said. His name should never be spoken. He should be erased from the world, a blank space.
I’d stood outside near the swinging woman, smelling BBQ cooked on mesquite, appalled at the heat. I’d rent out Arizona and live in hell, I’d thought. But it felt good to be alive, to breathe the heat and scent of BBQ into my lungs, to study light and shadow on the adobe, to watch the yellow palo verde flowers tumble in the wind, looking like gleeful children released from school as they swirled past me.
May, I said. He set things in motion that no one can control now. Kate wasn’t the head of some group, just a figurehead for a belief. You’ll never kill that.
A belief in what? That we’re evil, fake-mourning a son who never existed?
A belief that the government lies. And it did, again, about that first visit. Little nuggets like that are all the hoaxers need. She didn’t respond, and I understood; I’d just hung Nash out to dry. Hey, I said. Nash was just following orders. And he’s here. Ready to take his lumps. That’s something, May. Not a lot of people face up to things.
We fell quiet. A plane flew overhead, two doctors were called on the hospital intercom, an ambulance drew closer, siren wailing. I hadn’t pierced her armor.
Enough with the killing and the death, I said. What’s it given you? Given us?
Something to look forward to, she said. Revenge.
You can come back from this, May. And I’m not the only one who thinks that.
Liam’s not here, she said, turning her gaze back on me. Those same beautiful blue eyes as his. He’s gone, she said.
Yes. Three years now. But not Nash. He’s here. He’s right outside.
Her eyes were still flat; Nash wouldn’t be enough, so I turned manipulative. What would Liam think of you driving cross-country to kill someone?
Don’t say that, she said. You can’t even be in the same house with him. You don’t get to use him against me.
I can’t be in the same house with his ashes, May. You should let those go too.
She didn’t say anything, but tears rolled down her cheeks, and I knew I’d hit home. I felt her anger beginning to slip, a turning tide. Love was left, and a little hope, but those probably wouldn’t be enough, since she’d always warmed to a tangible goal. I’d given Lamont one, and I needed to give her one too, something with a bit of astringency. I said, If you can’t forgive Kate, you can at least give her food and water.
Why would I do that?
I held up Evelyn’s ragged green New Testament and quoted Proverbs 25.
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.
It might work, it might be just the thing, I said. Or get Zhao to start a listserv. People to write the hoaxers. Over and over. Give out their addresses, make them afraid too. See how they like feeling the waters rise around them.
I saw a flicker of determination. It was enough, I knew, and opened my book and pulled out the letter I’d written, unsure I’d be able to control my voice, that I could say what I needed to. I gave both to her and waited while she read the letter.
Dear May,
Our boy died, that’s the main thing, but it’s not the only thing. No, Liam lived too and that’s what gives meaning to his life; not death. And this is his book. Our book, his and mine. And now ours.
In the end, it’s a love story, as all ghost stories are.
May ran her hand over the book cover; it was no longer just an erasure book.
I love this drawing, she said, Liam’s red tulip visible beneath her spread fingers. Goosebumps rose on my arms as her fingertips traced the flower.
Departures and Arrivals
Back in the waiting room, Nash peeled flowers from his boot and dropped them in a yellow pile on the blue chair beside him and asked where I was headed.
To the airport, I guess. You’ll be more help navigating what’s to come than I am. But you’ve got my number. Call if you need anything.
I caught his look. I’m not abandoning her, I said. I’ve already arranged for a good lawyer, and from what she says, May’ll be out within twenty-four hours of arraignment. Then she’ll want to go home. You should take her. You’re the one she called.
Okay, he said, and nodded. And what about you? Back home? Work?
Work in a bit, I shrugged. There’s someone I want to see.
Not the hoaxers, I hope. Wasn’t tuning up one enough for you?
It had been, I saw, and that he’d known all along. I thought of how, on the plane ride out, something had shifted in me, a pinprick in the balloon of my hatred, how it had drained away mile by mile, though really it had begun to leak out after following not-Kate in the grocery store. Earlier, even, post-Vermont, and even earlier than that, with Hardy Starling. There was no real satisfaction in hurting others. Balm for the soul came from other sources, at least for me. Perhaps for Lamont it would be different.
I was the cop in the post office parking lot now on the anniversary, looking at me in my car as I hoarded my anger, swollen with it, understanding it would do me no good, understanding too that I’d have to learn that on my own. He’d been so much wiser than me, or perhaps simply farther down the long sorrowful road we all have to travel, toward some sort of final understanding or conflagration.
Lamont was headed toward the latter, but I realized I no longer was; you see yourself more clearly sometimes because of what happens to others. Kate was out there and always would be, her or someone like her who would take her place. I could find her and all who followed her and it wouldn’t change a thing. Hoping to stop the hoaxers by getting Kate would be useless, like trying to strangle ink.
No, not the hoaxers, I said to Nash. I’m done with that. Someone else. Someone good.
You got someone special? He slapped his boot. That’s good. I hadn’t heard.
I don’t know, I said. Maybe. She told me her middle finger got a boner every time she thought of me.
Ouch, he said, but smiled. That smile. No wonder May fell for him.
Yeah, I said. But I deserved it. Maybe I can make it up to her.
I stuck out my hand and he held his up, sticky from the flowers, and stood and hugged me wordlessly until I turned and left. I would go see Palmer and I would tell her the truth, all of it, let her review my past, and then I’d listen, for however long she wanted to talk or yell or give me the silent treatment, and in that way we would argue the past together. Even a small chance was worth it. If nothing else, I might find out about that malfunctioning middle finger in person. Better to do these things face to face, to do everything face to face, than to communicate online.
That’s part of Liam’s gift too.
Liam chose Yes no Yes no Yes no Yes no Yes and Yes and Yes
The Lazarus Taxon
JUNE 21, 2019
In the end, I stand on Palmer’s doorstep, hands loaded with flowers and a bag of dusty stones and a container of potato garlic soup I’ve made for her, sunlight and shadow streaming down her hallway as she holds the door open, my long shadow and all I carry with me, Liam and those who pursued me, the name I’d given Lamont, all of it. She has to know. She will.
And about the beautiful names of the streets I’d seen in Arizona, the ones I liked because they recorded its history, a history I didn’t know but found myself curious about. Pecan Road and La Brezza and Alhambra Square, Peters View and Fruitland Acres. You could live here, I’d thought. The new New World. They had guns there too but they had them everywhere, and so I would make my way forward as I could. If moving around hadn’t helped with moving on, maybe moving away would.
And after I tell her? We’ll see what happens, if I’ll be allowed to rest a little, or a little longer, and by myself or in company. It’s worth a chance. She has postcards from Arizona on her fridge: I love the desert most of all, and the Thoreau quote about fishing stuck to her toaster, and tucked in my pocket is the brochure I picked up at the airport. Fish Arizona! Perhaps we would. That fishing creel on her wall.
Come in, she says, and stands aside. She touches my arm as I brush past, striding toward my shadow stretching down her hallway, until I stop so fast she bumps into me. That scent? I say. From the kitchen? Lemon scones?
Yes, she says, and as I walk again she steps beside me and slips her small warm hand into mine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Jeff Skinner read an early draft of Otto and Liam and made wise, crucial and transformational suggestions. Nicole Aragi read it next, and once again showed that her peerless agenting skills are matched by her keen editorial eye. Once I’d thoroughly revised it yet again, Ryan Ridge and Chris Fox told me it wasn’t yet done and pointed out ways to sharpen it. Sometimes, small changes bring big results.
Cassidy Meurer’s art was a source of wonder and pleasure, shimmering work that captured the story at decisive points and inspired it at others; I can’t thank or compliment her enough. Laura Hill’s art arrived at the perfect time, and sent me back to create and revise.
The people at Sarabande are uniformly superb. Sarah Gorham, whose unflagging enthusiasm and support were paired with precise, insightful and illuminating editorial suggestions—at every turn, she was right; Danika Isdahl, who has overseen its incredibly smooth production (even in these peculiar times); Joanna Englert, ready to advocate for the book from the start, and her thoughtful, necessarily improvisational approach to doing so in the midst of a pandemic; and Kristen Miller, who helps keep the ship together. Near the end, Emma Aprile provided her usual meticulous exactitude as a copy editor, and Alban Fischer came along with his powerful cover. To all of you, many, many thanks.
I have been lucky throughout this process; I wish all writers could have the same experience. Along those lines, I’d like to thank Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation. Their generosity and hospitality were unparalleled, and I wrote part of this manuscript while an Aspen Words Writer in Residence.
PAUL GRINEE is the author of the novels Collectors, The German Woman, and Second Life, and the story collections Follow Me (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers choice) and Hurry Please I Want to Know (winner of the Kentucky Literary Award). He teaches writing and literature at the University of Louisville.
SARABANDE BOOKS is a nonprofit literary press located in Louisville, KY. Founded in 1994 to champion poetry, short fiction, and essay, we are committed to creating lasting editions that honor exceptional writing. For more information, please visit sarabandebooks.org.