No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  As we set down the barbecue, Jake said, ‘It’s a damned winter wonderland out here.’

  ‘That track ain’t going to be very passable, if the snow keeps up.’

  ‘We’ll have the truck.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  We stood side-by-side and peered into the dusk, as if trying to judge how much snow had fallen, and how much might continue to fall. The forecast was for more snow overnight.

  Jake said, ‘We could go tonight.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll stop drinking.’

  ‘How much you had?’

  ‘Just the Irish coffee, and one beer.’

  ‘We’ll go after dinner, then.’

  ‘Does Sam know the plan?’

  ‘Some. I think she knows some.’

  I stooped to put my beer can down in the snow, and went to fetch the bag of charcoal. We dumped a dozen or so briquettes into the base of the barbecue – rattling around in there like bones – and soaked them in lighter fluid and tossed on a match. They went up with a whoosh before settling into a slower burn. Jake lowered the lid and opened the vent and pleasant-smelling smoke drifted out. It seemed odd, smelling those briquettes in the middle of winter. It was such a summer smell.

  Sam poked her head out. ‘Are you cooking yet?’

  ‘Need to heat it up first, but you can bring out the ribs, if you like.’

  ‘Just got to get my jacket.’

  When she was gone, I said, ‘Should I tell Maria?’

  ‘You better.’

  Maria was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for salad. I didn’t know how to broach the matter so instead I told her about the tequila we’d bought, and asked if she wanted to help me make some margaritas.

  She looked at me funny. ‘Sure – if you like.’

  There wasn’t much to help with, but she stood by me as I went about it. I squeezed the lime juice into a glass, and dumped that into the blender with ice and water. Delaney’s designer blender broke up the ice, no problem – whirling it into a smooth slurry paste.

  ‘He’s good with her, isn’t he?’ she said.

  She gazed past me, at the big window overlooking the porch. Out there you could see the figures of Jake and Sam, huddled over the barbecue coals, talking and laughing.

  ‘You should have seen him the other day,’ I said. ‘When he’d first met her.’

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell him. I meant to tell you both the night you arrived.’

  ‘Not years ago?’

  ‘I already been through all that with him.’ She touched my arm. ‘Not you, too.’

  ‘A person ought to know if he’s got a daughter.’

  ‘We were all a mess at the time. Just a big disaster.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘You do?’

  It hung between us, then. I got out four of those plastic cups and poured the margarita slush into them. We both watched it spill out, as if the contents were incredibly valuable and important. When it was done, she said, ‘She could be yours too, you know.’

  ‘I know that. I thought of that.’

  ‘Does Jake know?’

  ‘No.’

  I felt as if my whole body was humming. It had been during Jake’s trial. We’d both been called as witnesses and on other days we sat in the audience, watching. At night we’d get hammered and get high and on some of those nights things had happened.

  I said, ‘It’s one of the things I feel the worst about.’

  She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘We didn’t know what the hell we were doing. After your sister died …’

  ‘I know about that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t regret it, anyway.’

  ‘No regrets, eh?’

  ‘I’ve done a lot of things I regret, but that’s not one of them.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It didn’t make me feel less guilty, but it made me feel less something. Less weighted, maybe. Less heavy. I’d been carrying it around for a hell of a long time, even if I’d tried to ignore it. Like a piece of shrapnel I’d picked up.

  ‘Does it matter to you?’ she asked. ‘Whether she’s …’

  ‘My niece or daughter?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘She’s kin. That’s what matters.’

  ‘Jake said she looks just like Sandra did, at that age.’

  ‘She’s the spitting image.’

  I got down one of the bottles of Lunazul, cracked it, and splashed tequila in two of the margaritas. She took one and asked, ‘Who’s the other virgin for?’

  ‘Me, tonight.’

  ‘You ain’t drinking?’

  ‘I may be driving.’

  I looked at her fully. I’d been avoiding her gaze without even realizing.

  She said, ‘Jake said tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s the snow.’

  Her face crumpled, but only for a split second: it was as if she started crying, and then stopped herself, cutting it off. Just refusing to let that happen or the tears take hold of her.

  ‘I was worried about that.’

  ‘You can come with us. You should.’

  She shook her head. ‘He’d follow me.’

  ‘He’ll come hunting us anyway.’

  ‘That’s why I have to stay. I can talk him out of it, make him leave you alone, and let Sam go. You brought the horse. That was the agreement. And you came through. I’m so glad you both did.’

  ‘Maria.’

  ‘I made my bed. I got to lie in it. But my daughter doesn’t. She sure as hell doesn’t.’

  She said it adamantly, almost fervently. I wasn’t sure about that, or what it meant. And when I looked at her, she looked away.

  ‘Does Sam know we’re related?’ I asked.

  ‘I think she does.’

  ‘You told her?’

  ‘Not in so many words. I must have hinted.’

  She was knocking back her margarita, gulping it, and she paused, all of a sudden, and palmed her forehead, squinting and wincing. She even cried out. She’d had a little brain-freeze, like you get when eating ice cream. When it passed, she looked at me and blinked back tears. ‘Damn,’ she said, ‘that hurts. It always hurts more than you think it will.’

  The door opened, and Sam rushed in. Tinsel-bits of snow clung to her tuque, and dusted her shoulders. Cold air and swirling flakes rushed in after her.

  ‘Jake’s teaching me to cook ribs,’ she said, as if it was the greatest thing in the world.

  When the food was ready we sat down together to have our feast. Sam and I set the table, laying out the dinner plates we’d picked up at the grocery store. It felt more like a proper meal, that way. Maria even lit a few candles, the flames floating around the wicks, the heat rising up from them in thin squiggles.

  Along with the steak and ribs Jake had roasted vegetables and potato chunks, wrapped in tin foil and lathered in oil. It had been years since I’d tried his damned whisky-grilled ribs, and they were something else: sweet and agonizingly spicy, smothered in a glaze of hot chillies and liquor. He and Maria were sharing a bottle of wine and Sam’s wild salsa music was still playing and the knowledge that we’d be leaving in a little while seemed distant, unimportant.

  Jake said, ‘Pass the margarita mix, will you Poncho?’

  Sam said, ‘How’d you get your nicknames, anyway?’

  ‘It’s an old country song,’ I said. ‘The real title is Pancho and Lefty, with an “a”. But we always thought they were saying “Poncho” like the ones you wear.’

  ‘I’m left-handed, a lefty,’ Jake said, ‘and as for Poncho here …’

  ‘We don’t need to go into that,’ I said.

  But of course that made Sam want to hear it all the more. So Jake told the story: of how we’d dressed up as banditos for Halloween, and had a firecracker fight. I’d worn an old poncho our father had picked up travelling down in Mexico. But when Jake had tagged me with a Roman candle, the damned poncho had caught
fire, and started burning. Jake had to jump on me and help smother it out.

  ‘I could have died,’ I said, getting into it.

  ‘Good old Poncho,’ he said fondly. ‘What would Lefty do without you?’

  Maria said, ‘Who would have thought you’d become real outlaws, one day?’

  ‘We’re not that real.’

  After we’d finished the meal we stayed at the table and kept on chewing the fat like that, talking about home and growing up together, and the things the three of us used to do: raising hell in our own small ways. It was mostly for Sam’s sake, and really I suppose we were talking around the one thing that needed to be said. But eventually somebody had to say it, and that fell to Maria. She poured herself another glass of red, and sat staring into it, swilling the wine for a time before looking up, her face set.

  ‘Samantha.’

  Something about her tone, and the way she’d used Sam’s full name like that, got her daughter’s attention – and ours too.

  ‘Remember I talked about you going to stay with your grandma.’

  Sam sat up a little straighter, as if she’d been pricked with a pin. ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘How would you feel about going back to Canada, with Jake and Timmy?’

  She looked around at us anxiously: these three serious-faced adults.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We were going to go tomorrow,’ Jake said. ‘But don’t want to get snowed in.’

  Sam picked up her fork (we had real plates but were still using plastic forks) and used it to push a few straggling vegetables around on her plate, herding them into a clump.

  She asked, ‘What about you, Mom?’

  ‘I’ll come later on. I’ll come join you in a few weeks.’

  Sam shook her head, as if arguing that point in her head, but she didn’t say anything about that. She said, ‘Do we have to go right now?’ She was asking us. Me and Jake.

  ‘Not right now,’ I said.

  ‘A little while,’ Jake said.

  ‘Give you time to get some things together.’

  You could see the uncertainty in her face. But she wasn’t scared: she had real pluck. I have to admit I was proud of her, even though I had no right to be. She gripped her fork and bent it back and forth, working the plastic to the point of breaking, but not quite.

  She said, ‘I hate it here,’ and looked up, her face turning fierce. ‘I want to leave. But I want you to come with us, Mom.’

  Maria reached across the table, and took her daughter’s hand.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘We’ll see.’

  I don’t know if she was just saying that, if she would have come or not. We sat for a time in silence, with them holding hands, stretched out towards each other, as the snow fell swift and soft outside the window, the sky all dark, and us miles from any place.

  Maria said, ‘Do something for me, Jake?’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Will you play a little for us? I haven’t heard you play for so long.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure I will.’

  He went to get his guitar. While he did, Maria retreated upstairs and I was left with Sam.

  ‘I know it’s all a bit crazy,’ I said. ‘I know you only just met us.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel that way.’

  ‘Glad you think so.’

  ‘Is he my dad?’

  She just came out and said it, straight up, in the way kids can do: as if she was asking whether or not I liked ice cream.

  ‘You’ll have to ask him that,’ I said.

  Her face folded up into a put-upon frown, and I felt like I’d let her down, somehow.

  ‘But look,’ I said. ‘We’re family, okay? I can assure you of that. We’re family, and in our family, we take care of our own. Since you’re our family, we’ll take care of you.’

  It didn’t come out very well, or sound as reassuring as I wanted it to, but the gist of it got through to her. She sat quiet and still for a time, staring at a spot on the table, her lips compressed to a line.

  Then she said, ‘I’ve never had much family.’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ I said, and touched her arm. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I only ever had my mom,’ she said. ‘And she’s …’

  She didn’t finish. She couldn’t. She just shook her head.

  Jake and Maria came back at almost the same time. She moved her chair around to be closer to Sam and Jake sat down with the guitar across his lap. He strummed and plucked the strings, making his usual adjustments. This time, for a change, he seemed satisfied – though as usual I couldn’t tell the difference.

  ‘Finally got you tuned,’ he said, as if the guitar could hear.

  He struck the first chord, and started singing one of his mournful ballads: about love and loss and most probably about Maria, though it never mentioned her by name. He sang it in this faltering voice, partway falsetto, that sounded wounded: promising to hold her close, to waltz her slow, to be there when she called. Maria sat and listened and even before the first verse finished she was crying. Not sobbing but simply weeping, the tears wet on her cheeks. Sam was still sort of teary-eyed from before and seeing all that got me going. We must have been quite the sight, the three of us: weeping away as the music emptied out of him.

  When the song finished, you could hear us snivelling, and Jake laughed hoarsely.

  ‘Well, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Some goodbye party this is. Here.’

  He struck a C major and launched into a more upbeat tune, strumming away. I didn’t recognize it until he started singing the first verse: ‘Poncho and Lefty’, his own version of it.

  Maria scrubbed the tears from her face and started clapping along and after a minute she stood up and sashayed over to me. ‘Dance with me, Timmy,’ she said. She took my hand and drew me up out of the chair: there was no point in resisting. She linked her arms behind my neck and I gripped her waist and we turned around together in a kind of quick-step waltz, her moving smooth and confident and me about as graceful as a tortoise. In my arms she felt light and dreamy, like dancing with an apparition, and I found it hard to meet her eyes. Maria always had a way of looking right at you. She never flinched.

  When Jake finished playing he put the stereo back on – to Springsteen – and dragged Sam to her feet to be his dancing partner. He swung and turned her around in the kitchen and at the chorus we broke up our pairings and sang along to ‘Atlantic City’. Sam didn’t know the words so we had to teach her. Then we kept on dancing, the four of us, whirling around the kitchen in a series of do-si-dos. It went on like that for a time until the track changed and things slowed down and Jake turned naturally to Maria and they sort of fell into each other. Sam and I paired up in a formal waltzing position – our hands clasped high – and tottered back and forth like that. Over the music I could hear Jake talking to Maria, close to her ear. I thought maybe he was trying to get her to come with us. But when the song ended she put a palm on his chest and pushed him away, tenderly.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘you better go pack and get some things together.’

  ‘I’ll load our stuff into the truck,’ I told Jake.

  Sam went on up, to do as her mother had asked, and I tugged on a jacket, ready to head down to the bunkhouse. I often think about that moment. If we hadn’t lingered for so long – reminiscing and dancing, waltzing down memory lane – then that could have been it: the end, or an ending, of sorts. Jake and Sam and I would have left an hour earlier, and been well on our way to the boat, the border, a new kind of life, maybe.

  But thinking like that is about as useful as thinking back to the night Sandy died, and wanting to change it – an inclination that is as inevitable as it is useless. It didn’t happen like that, and there’s no point in imagining otherwise.

  Instead, it happened like this: once I stepped outside, I heard the rumble of an engine. I thought maybe it was a plane. I wanted to believe it was a plane. Until
I saw the headlights, flickering in the woods. Two sets. They wavered up and down as the vehicles rattled over the track, and steadied upon reaching the long approach to the house. The beams lit up the falling snow, which circled and whirled in big clouds, like swarming insects. I stepped back inside.

  ‘Somebody’s coming,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Maria said, rushing to the window. ‘Oh, fuck.’

  The vehicles were two black SUVs: an Escalade and a Durango. There was no doubt who it could be. They’d had the same idea as us, apparently. The Delaneys had come a day early to avoid the snow.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sam must have heard the cars. Or maybe she saw them, from her bedroom window: the same window she’d witnessed the murders from. She came running downstairs with a bag of her things and took a few steps into the room.

  ‘You better unpack all that,’ Jake told her. ‘And stay upstairs for now.’

  ‘Is it them?’

  ‘You too, Maria.’

  Maria said, ‘He’s less likely to do anything if I’m here.’

  ‘Come down in a bit.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I just think it’s better you not seem to be too friendly with us.’

  Through the window, I could see figures getting out of the vehicles, now.

  ‘Go,’ Jake said.

  Maria looked at us with helpless eyes and led Sam back up the stairs. I heard their footsteps and a door close.

  ‘Jesus, man,’ I said.

  Jake adjusted his bandana, one-handed, like a soldier checking his helmet before the fray. We peered discreetly through the window, keeping out of their line of sight. Down by the cars they were moving about in the snow and unloading bags and whatnot. I counted four of them. Jake reached up and squeezed the back of my neck, in a strange gesture of brotherly encouragement.

  ‘We’re gonna have to talk them down,’ he said. ‘Get out when we can. Just follow my lead, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Hell.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, heading for the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going to greet them. It’s a success, right? A big fucking success.’