Blood Ties (49 page)

Then he turned and left the room. Helen, with a look at me I had to turn away from, followed, and I was alone with Gary.

I sat in the chair my sister had been in, by the side of the bed.

“You okay?” Gary asked, his eyes taking in the bandage on my forehead.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“I fucked up, huh?” He looked small to me, young.

“No,” I said. “You did the right thing. The stand-up thing.”

“I should have told you. What I needed to do.”

“It might have come out the same.”

“Paul's dead.”

“He wanted to die.”

“No, he didn't.” He opened his eyes wider, anxious to correct me. “He only wanted things not to be the way they were, anymore.”

I nodded. We were silent for a while, together. Gary's left arm was bandaged near the shoulder, where the bullet had cut through. An intravenous drip was needled into his other arm. He gestured to his right leg, immobile inside a thick cast under the blanket. He began to speak, stopped, swallowed, started again. “It's bad, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Mom and Dad, they say everything'll be okay, but I can tell it's real bad.”

“It's bad, Gary.”

He tried a grin. “Out for the season, huh?”

I couldn't answer.

“Shit,” he said, looked away. “Worse than that?”

“Yes.” My voice was a whisper.

“Are they gonna—are they gonna cut it off?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he said, and he was whispering too. “Okay, that's good then.”

I looked at him; his eyes were damp. He saw me see that, raised a quick hand, wiped the tears away.

I stood, bent by the bed, put an arm around him. It was an awkward embrace, because of the needle and the bandage, because of the cast, because we were both men, because of so many things.

His tears didn't last long. When his hold loosened, so did mine. I gave him a damp cloth for his face, took it from him when he was through.

“I'd better go,” I said. “Your mother . . .”

He nodded. “Uncle Bill?” he said rapidly, as I turned.

I turned back, waited.

“Will you come see me?”

“Whenever you want,” I said. “Nothing will stop me.”

I passed by my sister and Scott in the hall, didn't look at them, didn't stop. Lydia was leaning on the wall a few doors down. We fell into step as we walked. When we reached the elevator she took my hand. We said nothing.

Lydia and I headed for the rear door again. As soon as we were outside I lit a cigarette. We walked through the rain to my car. The wind had gone elsewhere, leaving the rain behind, and the rain fell vertically now, steadily, without fury but not letting up, doing the job though it had forgotten just why.

As I took out my car keys a voice called my name.

“Smith!”

I drew a breath, turned. Scott stalked through the rain, headed toward us.

“Smith! What the fuck did you say to him?”

I spoke quietly. “I told him he's a brave, tough kid. I told him I was sorry.”

“Bullshit! The kid's been crying. He—”

“Christ, Scott! He's crippled, a friend of his is dead. How is he supposed to feel?”

“There's more. You told him some other bullshit—”

“There is more,” I said. I dragged deep on my cigarette, then tossed it down. Its burning tip glowed briefly through the rain, vanished as the water won. Scott stood close to me, rain running down his face. All his muscles seemed taut, working, as though he were pulling against invisible restraints. “But I didn't tell him.”

“What do you mean, more?” Scott's voice was low now, dangerous. “You told him some bullshit, some lying shit, and now he—”

“No, Scott.” I felt my own fists tighten, my face begin to burn. “Not bullshit. I saw it happen and so did you or you wouldn't be out here now. But I didn't tell him.”

He took a step in. “You lying sack of shit—”

“Tell him what?” Lydia asked, and I think it was just to try to bring us down, to move the fire away from the fuse.

“Nothing!” Scott shouted. “It's bullshit. He told him bullshit because he fucked up so bad. Because he went in there to be a hero but that other kid's dead and Gary—Gary—”

I should have had the strength to do nothing, to turn and walk away. But the old fire swept through me, bursting from where I had tried to keep it, and fire weakens what it burns. “Gary's crippled,” I said. “Because your friend Macpherson wanted him dead, Scott.”

“You—”

“I saw every shot,” I said. “Like when I played, like being in the zone. Everything was clear, everything was slow.” It was that same way now, I realized: Scott before me, his face tight with rage; Lydia, motionless; the sound of each raindrop hitting the pavement, sharp and distinct. I had time to choose my words, time to do or say whatever I wanted. “Your pal Al,” I said. “He fired the first two shots because he knew what that would start. He thought we'd all end up dead. The way he wanted.”

“It's bullshit.” Scott forced out rough words. “Pure fucking crap!”

I shook my head. “You hid what Al did before, twenty-three years ago, hid it from the town, hid it from yourself. You want to try to hide this, too?”

Scott, trembling, said nothing, but it hadn't really been a question and I couldn't stop now.

“It was because of what Macpherson thought Gary knew. What he thought you'd told him, about that time. But I didn't tell Gary. You know why?”

Still nothing; and I knew that was because any move Scott made now would trigger the explosion. “If Gary knew,” I said slowly, “he'd hate Macpherson, and he might start hating you. That would make things worse for him, and right now things are about as bad as he can handle. So I didn't tell him. He thinks it was just bad luck, some cop's bullet that blew his leg away. He thinks he can trust you, and he does, and he loves you. And you're going to have to look at him for the rest of your life, and know that.”

Each raindrop, pounding as it fell; each streetlight, each taillight on each passing car glowing completely alone, separately in the night. I didn't know if Scott heard them, saw them all, the way I did, didn't know how my words, intended as blows, fell on him. I waited, and then it came. With a wordless roar Scott leaped at me, fingers spread on hands that reached for my throat. He was powerful, stocky and muscular and full of fury; but I had all the time in the world.

I moved fluidly aside, clamped his wrist, yanked him toward me. His own forward force made him stumble and he crashed across the hood of my car. I hauled him up, threw a hard fist into his face, another into his chest, wanting his heart. He bent, staggered back, came up out of that with a punch that caught my jaw, snapped my head around.

I felt no pain; I felt nothing but the fire, sweeping me, devouring. I reached for Scott, grabbed his arm. I twisted it high, pulled him in by it. He tried a roundhouse but I moved my head aside; he didn't even clip me. I was in the zone. I could do anything, land any blow, duck any punch. I hooked my ankle behind Scott's, sliced his leg from under him. He hit the ground with a howl. His face knotted, but this time with pain. He clutched his left arm. I stood over him, and when his eyes met mine, his widened, maybe with hate, though I hoped it was fear. He scrambled to stand, his left arm angling oddly, but he slipped on the slick pavement, moaned in pain as he landed. I dived for him, but Lydia shoved me from the side, and I crashed down onto the wet asphalt, too.

I jumped to my feet, still burning, ready, saw Lydia now standing in front of me, between me and Scott. I shouted, “Move!”

“No,” she said.

“Get the fuck out of my way!”

“No.”

“This isn't your fight! I'm going to kill that bastard!”

She said nothing and she didn't move. Rain fell like a curtain between us.

Scott lay moaning, clutching his arm. He stared at me, made no move to rise. It would have been so easy, and so final, to let it happen, let the fire consume us both.

But Lydia stood, feet spread, hands open, still and quiet, in the rain.

“Goddammit!” I roared. “You think you can stop me? You think you can take me?”

“No,” she said. “I know I can't. But you'll have to go through me.”

The fire raged everywhere now, in my skin, in my blood, in my heart. I saw it reflected in Lydia's eyes, heard it crackle in the crashing of the rain. It shook me, tore at me. I couldn't look at Lydia. I raised my fists, but everything was gone, the fluid grace, the timing and the strength. I couldn't move. I stood another moment, burning, then wheeled and took off through the storm.

The streets of Plaindale: homes with yellow windows glowing in the night; blocks of stores, all closed now, except for the bars. Streetlights defying the weight of the rain and the darkness. I blundered, running, walking, stumbling. stopped in one of the bars, or two, choked on their smoke, drowned in their tinny jukebox music, the repetitive idiotic melodies and the words about nothing that mattered at all. I walked past the grade school, through a park, and along the edge of the highway. I stood and watched the cars stream by: white lights racing at me, hulking bodies passing, red lights vanishing, over and over. At a 7-Eleven I bought a six-pack. Sometime, somewhere else, I found myself sitting in a doorway, a can in my hand, one in my pocket; the others were gone. Later, I was walking again, through a ghost area of high fences topped with razor wire. I couldn't make out, through the steady rain, much of what was behind the fences: low buildings, trucks, piles of whatever needed to be protected. I smoked until my cigarettes were gone, looked for someplace to buy more but everything was closed. I was soaked but I didn't care; I may have been cold but I didn't feel it. The sky had begun to lighten, or maybe I was crazy, when I found myself at the 7-Eleven again. A young kid, maybe eighteen, sold me more cigarettes, but said sorry man, no beer, it's Sunday. He paled when I began to laugh, and he slid his hand slowly beneath the counter. As though in a mirror, or standing beside him, I saw myself as he did: sodden, bandaged, unshaven, unsteady. I backed off, said hey man, no problem, left his store before he had to take out whatever weapon he kept there, learn something about himself he didn't need to know yet. I smoked, and walked, and sat and stood and walked some more, and the sky went to gray. The rain thinned, finally stopped. A guy in a white apron was unlocking the door of a bakery as I passed, so I waited until he was set, bought a cup of coffee. At a doughnut shop, later, I bought another. I heard church bells ring across a distance as I turned a corner, cut from the sidewalk into the hospital lot.

The lot wasn't empty, but my car sat by itself, nothing near it but glossy flat puddles and dull, rough asphalt. The streetlights had gone out, though cold blue flourescents still burned in the hospital windows like a sharp reproach. As I unlocked the car, the hospital doors slid open. Someone walked toward me: Lydia. I waited, watched her. Her skin was dull; dark crescents hung below her eyes. When she reached me we both stood, neither of us speaking. When I got in, she did, too.

I started the car, steered out of the lot. I drove through Plaindale, headed for the highway. Waves crested out of puddles as cars sliced through them. Horns blew, lights changed, people walked and stopped. All that was outside: in the car, only silence, solid and hard.

“What you did,” I said finally, hoping to find the control to speak. “That was crazy.” We were moving steadily back toward the city by then, the Sunday morning traffic flowing. They were the first words from either of us.

She turned her head to me, said nothing.

“I could have gone through you,” I said. “However good you are, you couldn't have stopped me.”

“I know.”

“I could have hurt you badly, to get to Scott.”

“You would have killed Scott.”

“No loss.”

“No.”

I looked over at her. “Then why?”

“Why?”

“That kind of risk, for a bastard like him?”

“Him?” She said the word as though she didn't understand it. “You think I did that for him?”

“To keep me from killing him.”

“For
him
?” She kept her eyes on me for a moment, then turned, clamp-jawed, to stare out the windshield at the other cars.

I lit a cigarette; Lydia rolled her window down.

I said, “I didn't ask you for help.”

“I'm your partner.”

“When did that make you my conscience?”

“You can be wrong,” she said.

“So can you.”

“But last night,” she said, “I wasn't.”

A long time later, not looking at me, she said, “Scott has a broken elbow.”

“You expect me to be sorry?”

Staring out the window, she said, “I talked to him, while they were setting it. I told him Gary will never be safe as long as Macpherson thinks he knows his secret. As long as he thinks that without Gary it can stay a secret.”

“What did—?”

“I don't know. But it might start Scott thinking.” She turned to me. “It might make him useful. Killing him, that's useless.”

That was all; I dropped her home in Chinatown, put the car away, walked back to my place. It's quiet in my neighborhood on Sunday morning, empty, especially on a morning like this, dull and gray and cold. Cold; I realized as I unlocked the street door, climbed the stairs, how cold I was.

thirty

I poured some bourbon as soon as I got upstairs, stripped off my wet clothes, and wrapped myself in a blanket on the sofa, thinking to sleep; but though sleep came, it wasn't deep and it was not peaceful. I kept waking to the light, to the sounds from the street, to the blanket's roughness and the pounding in my head; and I kept falling back into a restless state where vague ghostly shapes moved in dark waters of fear and longing. A dream finally came where the images were clear: my daughter Annie, alive as she always is in my dreams, ran beside Gary through the mist on a forest trail at the edge of a stream. They were fleet and strong; they were laughing and beautiful. I stood on the opposite bank, called to them, but my words had no sound, no strength to rise above the tumbling water. They ran on. Lydia walked out of the mist to stand on the path and face me. “You can ford it here,” she said, but I couldn't move. The water flowed harder, swirled and crashed. Lydia pointed again at the place where the stream could be crossed, then turned and walked on. She went in the direction Annie and Gary had gone; I lost them in the shadows.