The Simple Truth (25 page)

Josh slowed the truck and turned down a dirt road that led deeper into the woods. Rufus had filled him in on some of the details of what had happened twenty-five years ago, what those men had done to him. Josh felt his face grow hot as he now recalled an incident he had kept buried. It was principally what drove the anger, the hatred in him. What their little town in Alabama had done to the Harms family after the news of Rufus’s crime. He had tried to protect his mother then, but had failed. Let me meet up with the men who did this to my brother.
You hear that one, God? You listening?

His plan was to hide out for a while and then hit the road again when the pressure died down. Maybe try to get to Mexico and disappear. Josh wasn’t leaving all that much behind. A disintegrated family, a carpentry business that was always on the wrong side of profitability despite his skill. He guessed Rufus was all the family he had left. And he was certainly all Rufus ever would have. They had been cut off from each other for a quarter century. Now, in middle age, they had a chance to be closer than brothers normally were at this time in their lives. If Josh and Rufus could survive. He tossed out the cigarette and kept on driving.

In the back of the camper, Rufus was, indeed, not asleep. He lay on his back, a black tarp partially over him — Josh’s doing, the tarp designed to blend in with the dark truck bed liner under him. Stacked around him were boxes of food, secured by bungie cords — also Josh’s doing, a wall to prevent anyone from seeing in. He tried to stretch out a little, relax. The motion of the truck was unsettling. He had not been in a civilian automobile since Richard Nixon had been president. Could that really be? How many presidents ago was that? The Army had always transported him between prisons via helicopters, apparently unwilling to let him get this close to the road, to freedom. When you escape from a chopper, there wasn’t much place to go except down.

Rufus tried to peek between cardboard, out at the passing night. Too dark now. Freedom. He often wondered what it would feel like. He still did not know. He was too scared. People, lots of them, looking for him. Wanting to kill him. And now his brother. His fingers gripped the unfamiliar texture of the hospital Bible. The one his mother had given him was back in the cell. He had kept it beside him all these years, turned again and again to the scriptures as sustenance against all that was his existence. He felt empty of brain and heart without it. Too late now. He felt his heart start to accelerate. He figured that was bad — too much strain on it. From memory he recited comforting words from the Bible’s bounty. How many nights had he mumbled the Proverbs, all thirty-one chapters, the one hundred and fifty Psalms, each one telling and forceful, each one with particular meaning, insight into elements of his existence.

When he finished his
“readings,”
he half rose and slid open the window of the camper. From this angle he could see his brother’s face in the reflection of the rearview mirror.

“I thought you were sleeping,”
Josh said.

“Can’t.”

“How’s your heart feel?”

“My heart ain’t troubling me none. If I die, it ain’t gonna be because of my heart.”

“Not unless it’s a bullet ripping through it.”

“Where we headed?”

“A little place in the middle of nowhere. I figure we stay there a bit, let things die down, and then we head out again when it’s dark. They probably think we’re shooting south, going for the Mexican border, so we’re going north to Pennsylvania, at least for now.”

“Sounds good.”

“Hey, you said Rayfield and that other sonofabitch — ”

“Tremaine. Old Vic.”

“Yeah, you said they’ve been watching over you all this time. After all those years went by, how come they were still hanging in there? Didn’t they figure if you remembered what happened you would’ve said something before now? Like maybe at your trial?”

“Been thinking about that. They maybe thought I couldn’t remember nothing then, but maybe I might one day. Not that I could prove nothing, but just me saying stuff might get them in trouble or at least get people looking around. Easiest thing was to kill me. Believe me, they tried that, but it didn’t work. Maybe they thought I was messing with ’em, playing dumb and hoping they’d give up the guard, and then I start talking. With them at the prison, they pretty much had me under their thumb. Read my mail, checked out people coming to see me. Anything look funny, then they just take me out. Probably felt better about doing it like that. After so many years, though, they got a little lazy, I guess. Let Samuel and that fellow from the Court come see me.”

“I figured that. But I still got that letter from the Army in to you. I didn’t know all this shit was going on, but I didn’t want them having a look-see at it either.”

The two stayed quiet for a while. Josh was naturally reserved and Rufus wasn’t used to having anyone to talk to. The silence was both liberating and oppressive to him. He had a lot he wanted to say. During Josh’s thirty-minute visits at the prison each month, he would talk and his brother would mostly listen, as though he sensed the accumulation of words, of thoughts in Rufus’s head.

“I don’t think I ever asked you:You been back home?”

Josh shifted in his seat.
“Home? What home?”

Rufus started slightly.
“Where we was born, Josh!”

“Why the hell would I want to go back to that place?”

“Momma’s grave is there, ain’t it?”
Rufus said quietly.

Josh considered this for a moment and then nodded.
“Yeah, it’s there, all right. She owned the dirt, she had the burial insurance. They couldn’t
not
bury her there, although they sure as hell tried.”

“Is it a nice grave? Who’s keeping it up?”

“Look, Rufus, Momma’s dead, okay? Long time now. Ain’t no way in hell she’s knowing nothing about how her grave looks. And I ain’t going all the way down to damn Alabama to brush some leaves off the damn ground, not after what happened down there. Not after what that town done to the Harms family. I hope they all burn in hell for it, every last damn one of ’em. If there is a God, and I got me some big-ass doubts on that, then that’s what the Big Man should do. If you want to worry about the dead, you go right ahead. I’m gonna stick to what counts: keeping you and me alive.”

Rufus continued to watch his brother. There is a God, he wanted to tell him. That same God had kept Rufus going all these years when he had wanted to just curl up and sink into oblivion. And one should respect the dead and their final resting place. If he lived through this, Rufus would go see to his mother’s grave. They would meet up again. For all eternity.

“I talk to God every day.”

Josh grunted.
“That’s real good. I’m glad He’s keeping company with somebody.”

They fell silent until Josh said,
“Hey, what was the name of that fella come visit you?”

“Samuel Rider?”

“No, no, the young fella.”

Harms thought for a moment.
“Michael somebody.”

“From the Supreme Court, you said?”
Rufus nodded.
“Well, they killed him. Michael
Fiske.
Anyway, I guess they killed him. Saw it on the TV right before I came to get you.”

Rufus looked down.
“Damn. I figured that would happen.”

“Stupid thing he did, coming to the prison like that.”

“He was just trying to help me. Damn,”
Rufus said again, and then fell silent as the truck rolled on.

With Fiske directing her, Sara drove to his father’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Richmond and pulled into the gravel driveway. The grass was brown in spots after another heat- and humidity-filled Richmond summer, but fronting the house there were carefully tended flower beds that had benefited from consistent watering.

“You grew up in this house?”

“Only house my parents have ever owned.”
Fiske looked around, shaking his head.
“I don’t see his car.”

“Maybe it’s in the garage.”

“There’s no room. He was a mechanic for forty years, and accumulated a lot of junk. He parks in the driveway.”
He looked at his watch.
“Where the hell is he?”
He got out of the car. Sara did as well.

He looked at her over the roof of the car.
“You can stay here if you want.”

“I’ll come in with you,”
she said quickly.

Fiske unlocked the front door and they went in. He turned on a light, and they moved through the small living room and into the adjacent dining room, where Sara stared at a collection of photos on the dining room table. There was one of Fiske in his football uniform; a little blood on the face, grass stains on the knees, sweaty. Very sexy. She caught herself and looked away, suddenly feeling guilty.

She looked at some of the other pictures.
“You two played a lot of sports.”

“Mike was the natural athlete of the family. Every record I set, he broke. Easily.”

“Quite the jock family.”

“He was also valedictorian of his class, a GPA on the north side of four-point-oh, and a near-perfect score on the SATs and LSATs.”

“You sound like the proud big brother.”

“A lot of people were proud of him,”
Fiske said.

“And you?”

He looked at her steadily.
“I was proud of him for some things, and not proud of him for others. Okay?”

Sara picked up a photo.
“Your parents?”

Fiske stood beside her.
“Their thirtieth anniversary. Before Mom got sick.”

“They look happy.”

“They were happy,”
he said quickly. He was growing very uncomfortable with her seeing these items from his past.
“Wait here.”
Fiske went to the back room, which had once been the brothers’shared bedroom and now had been turned into a small den. He checked the answering machine. His father had not listened to his messages. He was about to leave the room when he saw the baseball glove on the shelf. He picked it up. It was his brother’s, the pocket ribbing torn, but the leather well oiled — by his father, obviously. Mike was a lefty, but the family had no money to buy a special glove for him, so Mike had learned to field the ball, pull off his glove and throw. He had gotten so good that he could do it all faster than a righty could. Fiske recalled that blur of efficiency, no obstacle his brother couldn’t overcome. He put the glove down and rejoined Sara.

“He hasn’t listened to my phone messages.”

“Any idea where he could’ve gone?”

Fiske thought a moment and then snapped his fingers.
“Pop usually tells Ms. German.”

While he was gone, Sara looked around the room some more. She eyed a small framed letter, set on a wooden pedestal. Wrapped around it was a medal. She picked up the frame and read the letter. The medal was for valor, awarded to Patrolman John Fiske, and the letter commemorated the event. She looked at the date it had been given. Quickly calculating, she concluded that the award would have been given at about the time Fiske had left the force. She still didn’t know why he had, and Michael never would say. When she heard the back door open, she quickly put the letter and medal down.

Fiske entered the room.
“He’s at the trailer.”

“What trailer?”

“Down by the river. He goes there to fish. Go boating.”

“Can you call the trailer?”

Fiske shook his head.
“No phone.”

“Okay, so we drive. Where is it?”

“You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty already.”

“I don’t mind, John.”

“It’s about another hour and a half from here.”

“The night’s sort of shot anyway.”

“You mind if I drive? It’s off the beaten path.”

She tossed him the keys.
“I thought you’d never ask.”

Let me get this right: On top of everything else that’s happened, you let him escape.”

“First of all, I didn’t
let
him do anything. I thought the guy had just had a friggin’heart attack. He was chained to the damn bed. He had an armed guard outside his door, and nobody was supposed to know he was even there,”
Rayfield snapped back into the telephone.
“I still don’t know how his brother found out.”

“And his brother’s some kind of war hero, I understand. Superbly trained in all forms of eluding capture. That’s just great.”

“It is for our purposes.”

“Why don’t you explain that one to me, Frank?”

“I’ve ordered my men to shoot to kill. They’ll put a bullet into both of them as soon as they get a chance.”

“What if he tells somebody first?”

“Tells them what? That he got a letter from the Army that says something he has no way to prove? Now we’ve got a dead Supreme Court clerk on our hands. That just makes our job a lot tougher.”

“Well, we were supposed to have a dead country lawyer too, but, funny, I haven’t read his obituary anywhere.”

“Rider went out of town.”

“Oh, good, we’ll just wait until he gets back from vacation and hope he’s not in discussions with the FBI.”

“I don’t know where he is,”
Rayfield said angrily.

“The Army has an intelligence component, Frank. What do you say you try to use some of it? Take care of Rider and then concentrate on finding Harms and his brother. And when you do, you put them six feet under. I hope that’s clear enough for you.”
The phone went dead.

Rayfield slammed the receiver down and stared up at Vic Tremaine.

“This is going to hell in a handbasket.”

Tremaine shrugged his shoulders.
“We take Rider out and then those two black SOBs, we’re home free,”
he said in a gravelly voice that seemed perfectly calibrated to command men to fight.

“I don’t like it. We’re not in a war here.”