Vengeance (24 page)

“You think you’re so much better than me? You turned your back on your family!”

“We’re back to this? You’re the one telling me I don’t measure up. You’re the one who’s too good for his own blood!” I said.

Casey had stayed perfectly still, taking mental notes, mining our words for anything he could leverage at a later date. Trying to get through to my dad was more exhausting than wrestling Rook. My heart rate had risen at the height of our exchange. But now it was settling because I had reached the same conclusion as I had five years before. It was impossible to love someone who refused to love himself.

“I’m going to say this once and for all,” I told him. I paused so Casey could get a fresh page ready in his book of dirty little secrets. “I am never going to be the person you wanted me to become. It’s not about judging you. It’s about knowing what I want and being my own man. Now you need to get over your disappointment and figure out how to love who I am, instead of resenting me for who I’m not. Or don’t. I just can’t care anymore.”

As the figurative dust settled, my dad and I stood like gunfighters, waiting for the other to shoot again or to fall down from the last wound we had delivered. His jaw relaxed and all his fury drained from his face, leaving a sober expression. He stepped toward Casey, who met him halfway.

“Go keep an eye on my drink,” he said to Casey and patted him on the upper arm. Casey obeyed. My dad stared at the pavement until he heard the door close. Then he raised his gaze to meet mine. I’ll always remember how he looked, because he looked, for once, as if he understood. “Neither of us is what the other would like,” he said. “That much we can agree on.” He exhaled a feeble attempt at a chuckle and I responded with an even less convincing impersonation. “But can’t we put that aside tonight? Sit with me, at least, even if you don’t want a drink. I’ve already lost one son. And the son I thought was gone forever came back. It took an awful misery to bring us here. Don’t just walk out.”

His voice was a confluence of anguish and humility. How was I supposed to refuse when he put aside his callousness and spoke honestly to me, for once? I nodded my assent and stepped back toward the door, but my dad stood his ground. I stopped before him and read the uncertainty in his eyes, as if he wanted to say something. Then it registered. So I did what he might have failed to do in his hesitation. I hugged the old man tight. We heard the other’s sobs muffled into our own heavy coats. The maelstrom of emotions we’d stirred up took a few minutes to dissipate before leaving us chilled and shivering in the winter night. We collected ourselves and went inside.

Back at the bar, Casey hid it well if his pride had been wounded. He launched into a toast, but I interrupted and told them not to make any toasts to what I had done. Instead, the four of us raised a shot to Aiden. Then I left Casey and my dad to their talking as I couldn’t help but reflect on what Rook had told me in the car at the river. That I knew what happened to my brother.

There we sat. The man who should have raised Aiden to transcend a life of crime, but who encouraged him to join the ranks of thugs and thieves. The friend who should have been a conscience, steering him from snares, but who hand-delivered him to the den where his ultimate fate was cast. The lover who could have embraced him when he shuddered from his sickness and supported him when he stumbled, but who cast him out and pulled away from him. The brother, the only full-blooded kin he had in this world, who should have always been around to listen to him, to understand, to still be that awestruck sibling whose admiration might have motivated Aiden to aspire to further greatness, but who abandoned him like a broken toy to be drowned in a heavy snow, entertaining thoughts of excavating him from a forsaken corner of the back yard once the weather was kind.

The Brothers, no doubt, had paid for a thick catalog of sins. But even if they were the blunt instruments who pummeled his skull and discarded him on a stretch of pavement, those events were perhaps inevitable by that moment. Sterling, the drugs, the Brothers, those were only the mechanisms in Aiden’s death.

The four of us. We were my brother’s killers. The people who neglected their inherent charge to keep him safe, to guide him home, to encourage his dreams, to call him more than once every seven or eight months – if only to hear his voice and to tell him so.

To tell him I loved him.

I felt like a ghost who knew it was time to pass on to the next plane. Paige was talking to a man with her back to me. Casey huddled with my dad, who was thrusting his index finger at the bar to accentuate every syllable of whatever scheme or story he was relaying. I didn’t want them to make a fuss over my leaving, so I slipped out without interrupting them.

Chapter 28

I slept my last night in town in my old room at the Red Roof Inn. I had dropped the Buick in front of the flop, gathered my stuff, and locked all the keys in the car before calling a cab to get back to the hotel village. Part of me wanted a shower with fresh towels and part of me just didn’t want to rack up any more debt to Casey. I was glad for the roll of cash right then, too, but I was going to spend what was left on a headstone for Aiden. I was sure my dad couldn’t afford it and I couldn’t bear the thought of my brother in an unmarked grave. If I couldn’t find justice, at least there was a sense of rightness in using the money for Aiden.

First, I was going to use some of it for a bus ticket. My flight was gone. The cash I had left would barely cover a new ticket. But a bus ticket would leave me with plenty of money for the headstone. I thought maybe I should call Natalie and tell her what my plans were. But then I thought maybe I had to just let her be. My problems weren’t her problems anymore. And I couldn’t stand to have her offer me pity or charity until I was able to move on.

Either way, I needed to get a game plan arranged before check-out time. I was about to call the bus station when someone knocked on my door. I opened to find Rook in front of his silver BMW.

“Still following me?” I asked, my sarcasm unconvincing.

“You leaving?” he said. It was a confirmation, not a question.

“Working on it. Missed my flight.”

On cue, he reached into his inner breast pocket and withdrew a small sheaf of papers. He extended it to me. A plane ticket to Tucson.

“I can’t afford this,” I said. Even if the cash roll could have covered the cost of the ticket, I hadn’t asked for anyone’s help and I wasn’t going to spend money allotted for Aiden.

“It’s a gift.”

“No strings attached?” I asked.

“Payment for services rendered.”

I inspected the ticket with the apprehension of a bomb squad opening an abandoned suitcase. The ticket was for first class and the plane departed in less than three hours.

“You packed?” he said. It was clear he was not only there to deliver the ticket but to deliver me to the airport.

After I rounded up the last of my things, I told him I had one errand I was hoping to run. I wrote my mailing address on a page of the motel notepad, along with a message that read, “Let’s keep in touch.” I figured I’d try to maintain communication with my dad. With fifteen hundred miles of buffer zone between us, maybe we could manage a little talk about the weather a few times a year without turning hostile. Rook didn’t seem to mind driving me to drop off the note. Still, he kept the car running at the curb and stared straight ahead with stoic resolve as if adamantly ignoring where we were.

Vickie answered my knock and told me through the four inch gap she had opened the door, “He’s asleep.”

“This is for him,” I said. I held the folded over note under her chin. Vickie snatched the paper and shut the door. She was the kind of person who might throw it away to spite me. But she was dutiful to my dad. So I assumed she’d give it to him and let him decide what to do with it.

We were so near the cemetery that I considered asking Rook to make a stop for me to say my good-byes. The raised spears of the black iron fence flickered past like an army standing guard. The silence in the car seemed like an invitation. Rook’s form was rigid, like he was poised to hit the turn signal and make a last-minute swoop into the turning lane upon the slightest hint from me. I turned my gaze forward and Rook eased into his seat as we left the cemetery behind and headed straight for the airport. After a few minutes of silence, I said, “This thing between you and my dad. You used to hijack cargo together? Rob banks?”

He didn’t even flinch. Curious as I was about his history with my dad, I think I was only trying to break the tension I felt. Not at riding with Rook. I was getting comfortable around him. But not even twelve hours before, I had been witness to two executions. Well, not a witness, really. Not even present. Not even an accomplice, maybe. By sending me back to the car when he did, Rook not only spared me certain trauma, he also must have greatly reduced my legal complication with the matter. If anyone ever looked into the Brothers’ deaths and heard talk that I had pulled the trigger, there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence to support that theory.

The closer we got to the airport, the more the problems of my real life encroached on my mind. My teaching load and catching up with grading, all while getting up to speed with the courses I was taking. It was going to be a rough few weeks. I’d have a paycheck waiting, at least. Along with an empty fridge and utility bills. Still, returning to a world filled with issues I was equipped to handle held a familiar comfort.

“You could just drop me at the curb,” I said when he headed for the parking lot. A small commuter jet had just taken off and another was coming in to land. Rush hour at the Cedar Rapids airport.

“Orders are to watch the plane take off with you on board.”

I was nuisance enough that my departure demanded verification. My ego grinned at the underlying compliment. Rook pulled into a spot and killed the engine, but kept his hands on the steering wheel, raising the index finger of his right hand as if to tell me to wait. So I let go of the door handle.

“Sterling’s done,” he said. The statement would have carried more weight if I hadn’t already learned of Sterling’s “fate.”

“I heard. Baltimore. Some punishment.”

“You’ve never been to Baltimore,” Rook dead-panned. His hands stayed still, so I knew he wasn’t done. “Summers can get hot. The humidity in a city, you know. But it’s the winters that you need to watch out for. Slip on a patch of ice, you could fall head first down a concrete stairwell, break your neck, and freeze in a puddle of your own piss and drool before the morning commuters find you.”

I considered the difference between dying instantly from a bullet to brain and the lingering, terrifying sensation of feeling yourself die anonymously in the night, completely helpless. “Some people surely deserve no less,” I said.

“It’s a mean fucking city,” he said, taking his hands from the wheel and extracting the keys. “I doubt our friend will survive the winter.”

As he got out, I wasn’t sure if I should thank him, but I assumed he knew exactly how much I appreciated his implicit promise. I caught up to Rook and plucked my bag from the gaping trunk.

When we got to the metal detector, Rook got in line behind me and emptied his pockets into a tray, too.

“You’re seriously going to watch me board the plane?”

“And wait for it to take off,” he said.

The airport was pretty basic. Once we were through security, the place was just a huge open space with gates along opposite walls. We located my flight and sat in the bank of seats, leaving an empty spot between us.

“Just so you don’t forget,” he said after a few minutes of people watching, “you get my locket back to me express delivery. And you make damn sure it doesn’t get lost or damaged.”

“I only took it as insurance,” I said. “I suppose I don’t need it anymore.”

He looked at me through the corner of his eye as if to tell me not to press my luck.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’ll still wager that you won’t do anything in the middle of an airport with security a hundred feet away.”

I stood so I could dig into my front pocket. I pulled out a parcel of folded over tissues. Rook realized what it held and extended a hand, palm up, to receive his locket. He unwrapped it, blew the tissue lint from both sides, and fastened it around his neck. I didn’t expect any thanks for returning stolen goods, but he did focus his glare to laser precision and nod ever so slightly, as if to tell me I had earned a morsel of respect for being true to my word. I sat back down with the one empty space between us. It wasn’t much of a buffer zone – not even as wide as his reach – but I was confident there was no more ambivalence between us.

“Had it on you the whole time, didn’t you?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Well played,” he said. “Your dad tell you why the locket means so much to me?”

“He just said it was a bargaining chip.”

“Bargaining chip? Your dad’s kind of a shit,” Rook said. He made a sound like a growl that swirled into a suppressed sigh. “My momma gave me this locket. Last thing she ever gave me. Did you look inside?”

I grunted that I hadn’t. My curiosity hadn’t trounced my sense of respect of his personal property. He opened it and held it as far as the chain would allow.

“It’s the only picture I have of my momma and me. Her house burned and took the rest. And her.”

He closed the locket and we sat silently. A plane arrived at my terminal and the passengers filed past us, carry-ons in tow. The ground crew disemboweled the beast of the luggage. The plane would be fueled and prepped for my flight. Time was running short.

“Given any thought to my nickname?” I asked.

He gave me a sideways look, not sure whether to take me seriously.

“It doesn’t have to be bad-ass. Just don’t want to end up with something lame,” I said.

“You won’t be needing one,” closing the discussion with is intonation.

The travelers who had amassed around us stood and funneled toward the gate as the boarding call crackled. I stood and faced Rook, unsure if I should just wave and walk off. Maybe that’s how people in his business said good-bye. But he rose and extended his hand. I took it and suffered the tectonic force of his handshake. As I turned to descend the jet bridge, Rook caught me by the shoulder.

“Ethan,” he said as I faced him. “What you did for Aiden required sacrifices most people would never entertain. It’s a gesture they can’t understand. But the people who matter know. Aiden knows.”

My legs nearly buckled as he spoke. I hadn’t been able to properly mourn my brother, but the swell of sadness and love had been raging just beneath my composure for days. Now a few sentences from a man who was a stranger days before threatened to unleash that tumult just when I felt I was leaving the tragedy behind.

“One of these days, someone’s going to take me out. If I haven’t had a chance to make amends – and Lord knows I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make amends – I hope someone will do for me what you did for Aiden.”

I looked him in the eye and saw a vulnerability I’m sure he knew I could see and that he had not shown many others in his life. I thought of how to reply. I was likely to say something flippant to break the tension. Instead, I nodded solemnly. He knew just what I meant.

We held the stare a moment longer and he nodded that I’d better be on my way. Everyone else had already boarded. A stewardess shut the cabin door shortly after I found my seat. I was again in a row of my own.

*

The hum of the taxiing plane massages you into relaxation. You close your eyes against the bright afternoon and roll under the breakers of sleep lapping at your mind. Running alongside the train as it accelerates away from the packing plant. Chasing your brother, whose blonde head bounces and gleams, whose longer legs and stronger arms catch the iron ladder welded to the side of the car lengths ahead of you, who turns back to see you struggling to catch him, lowers his feet to drag in the gravel as you both burst into laughter. The train lumbers to a halt and you know to run before one of the conductors scolds you about how you could lose a leg under the wheels horsing around like that and how they’re not a mile up the track and already behind schedule.

The train is now a stationary chain of open box cars. Your feet have grown wide across the gravel and you would have to bend down to see under the cars from your new height. An instinct as strong as gravity draws you to a particular car. When you approach it, you know who you will find, but nearly dissolve into tears when you see he is truly waiting there. You are aware your dreams are dreams as you dream, but you convince yourself to believe. Just believe so the dream will last.

“Hey,” Aiden says.

He’s sitting with his back against the edge of the open door, legs drawn up and forearms perched on his knees. His smile is dawn.

“Come on,” he says, and waves for you to climb aboard. You hoist yourself up, sit opposite him, against the other side of the gaping doors. You can’t stop smiling. You cannot remember the last time this much joy filled your heart.

“For some reason,” you say, “I thought you were taking a boat. Should’ve known you’d hop a train.”

“Only way to travel.”

“First class.”

“All the way.” He flips up the collar of his leather jacket for effect. His aviators are resting atop his wavy hair. You cannot stop staring at him. You cannot. If you blink or ignore the illusion for an instant, it may vanish. And it may never return. This moment you have been gifted. You exhale the anxiety and maintain your smile.

“Dad misses you,” you say.

“He’ll get over it,” he says.

You want to tell him you miss him, too, but don’t want to invite sadness. The engines churn. You are on your way. Sunshine caressing your face.

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