No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

by James Smythe

  ‘This is going to be okay,’ he tells them. ‘I know it looks bad now, but we will recover. That’s what we do. Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off. We rebuild.’

  ‘Why are you wearing the suit?’ Deanna asks. He looks down at himself, pulling the apron to one side. Maybe he didn’t realize.

  ‘It’s a good suit,’ he says.

  ‘It was. Why don’t you change?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ He’s almost affronted in his tone, Deanna thinks.

  ‘It’s what you were wearing in the video, Laurence. Maybe you should change it.’

  He laughs, a spit of noise. ‘You think that means something? No, Deanna. I’m wearing it because it’s comfortable, and because it’s what I want to wear. It’s a fucking suit. It’s not anything more than that. You think, what, that I am going to …? Like the video?’

  ‘You’ve got the gun,’ she says. She knows that it’s dangerous, because it’s true; but the girls are here, and they’re terrified of him.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ he says. ‘All I want is to protect you.’

  ‘Then let me take the girls home,’ Deanna says.

  ‘There was a time that I wanted to call this place home, you remember? We were prepared. We loved it here.’

  ‘You loved it here,’ she says, ‘and then Sean died, and …’ She doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. She doesn’t know where they go from here. He stands up and he pulls the apron off.

  ‘I think we’re done for the night,’ he says. It’s dark outside now, and he walks to the back doors. He stands outside, but beneath the netting. ‘You should all go to bed, I think. Get some sleep. If you aren’t happy here, we’ll leave in the morning. We’ll find somewhere else.’ He doesn’t look back.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Deanna asks. ‘Aren’t you going to sleep?’

  ‘When I was out here last night I saw the strangest light,’ he says. ‘I want to see it again.’ He walks out to the dock and he sits on the end of it, his feet dangling. Deanna walks to the door and looks out. The moon is there, underneath the water; somehow almost clearer to see there than it is in the sky.

  Upstairs, they all take the larger bedroom again, and the same bed between them. Deanna tells them to get ready for bed, to clean their teeth. Lane has somehow gone back in years. If Deanna ever worried that she was growing up too fast, she needn’t worry now: her little girl is back. And Alyx is quiet, like she was after Sean died. Nothing can be done about that now, Deanna thinks. When they’re past this, therapy can start back up again. Maybe it will help clear up what’s happened. Deanna supposes that the therapy will be different depending on how this ends. If Laurence walks out of here with them, that brings issues; and if he doesn’t, a whole other set. Deanna doesn’t know now which she would prefer. She just wants this to be easy, when it’s over; and she assumes that it will be over. She doesn’t want to think about the worst ending. Not yet.

  She sits at the foot of the bed and takes the remnants of the cellphone out of her bag, and she puts them on the blanket. The battery is loose and the plastic case has mostly snapped off, but the screen, strangely, is nearly intact and still attached to the board inside it. She pulls the case to pieces. Some shards of it are inside, on the board, where the battery should go, so she pulls them out gently. She thinks of pulling grit from the wounded knees of her children. When it’s done she tucks the battery in, so that it’s touching the conductors, and she puts the case back and holds the whole thing tightly, to keep it as one. She presses the power button and the screen sputters into life. It jangles, a start-up tone, and she yanks the blanket over it to muffle the noise. It seeks reception, and finds it, and the deluge begins. Notifications and texts and missed call alerts. Amit has tried to call her, over and over. There’s only one email. It’s from her agent, telling her that the publishers who offered for the book sent a message through. They’re desperate for it; they love it. There’s a note from the editor, about how it made her cry. They have run prediction software, and they can tell that it will hit with the audiences that they want it to; that readers will respond to the story that Deanna has told. Deanna writes a reply. She tells her agent to take the offer. She wants to see the book out with this publisher. This is all part of a different life that she once had. She presses send, watching the little animation of the envelope, and then she tries to call Amit. The call beeps off, going to his answering machine, and so she tries again. She doesn’t know what to say. She tells him not to call; that she’s got the phone working, barely. She’ll call back. She tells him where they are, because it might help if he were here.

  She wondered if Trent Henderson might not have told the police, because they haven’t come. No descending fleet of squad cars, no helicopters searching the woods for her fleeing husband; not even the sheriff, driving by to check that everything is all right in the house.

  She tries Amit one more time and then switches her phone off. Thirty percent battery left. She doesn’t know when she might need it, or what she might need it for.

  The girls sleep. It’s a miracle, Deanna thinks, how easily they can. They both breathe heavily next to her; and their breathing seems to fall in line with each other’s. It’s calming, to lie between them and feel it coming at her through the bed. It works its magic on her, despite her thinking that sleep is something she can’t find – and, as she’s trying, will never find again.

  She dreams of Sean. Why would she dream of anything else?

  She wakes up needing to use the bathroom, and as she gets out of bed there’s a noise from outside; a rustling in the woods, foxes or deer or something. There’s no hunting this close to the town, so the wildlife grows. Nature tries to take hold.

  She walks to the bathroom and sits down. She can see out of the window from here, looking back towards town. There’s a glow in the distance; what must be one of the shops, or the bar, or a restaurant. She doesn’t know what time it is, but it’s early in the morning. The black sky has a hint of the sun to it and she wonders who could be up at this time.

  When she’s done, she listens for Laurence. He is nowhere. She thinks about yesterday’s plan. Maybe today. Second time’s the charm. She goes downstairs and looks for him. He is on the decking, still; and still sitting up. She thinks about all the things that she could do. In the kitchen there is a knife, that they used to prepare dinner; and there is a weight to hold the door open, wrought iron, with one flat edge. She wonders how quiet she could be, creeping up behind him, and the thought of doing that – of having to do that in the first place – makes her feel sick to her stomach. She knows that she can’t escape, not now. He’s awake. She steps outside, instead. Maybe there is a way.

  ‘What light?’ she asks. He turns, surprised. Maybe she would have been quiet enough after all.

  ‘You’re awake,’ he says.

  ‘What light did you see?’

  ‘Across the water. Out there, somewhere over the water. Closer to the other side.’

  ‘One of the houses?’

  ‘No. It almost as if it was floating there, away from the coast.’

  ‘Like Gatsby.’

  He smiles. ‘I suppose, yes.’ He looks back. ‘I can’t see it now. Couldn’t see it all night. How can you miss something that you have only seen so briefly before?’

  ‘How does this end, Laurence?’ she asks. She sits on a chair at the back of the decking. She can’t bring herself to walk out onto the dock itself; not with him there.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  ‘Let me take the girls away.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I did this for us. Remember? I was doing this for our future.’

  ‘I remember,’ she says. ‘I don’t think you’re thinking of that now.’

  ‘I am,’ he says. He hits the decking with his hand. ‘I am. Deanna, it is all that I can think of. It’s everything to me, now. Making sure that we’re all together.’ He leans and looks down. ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened here,’ he says. ‘You mi
ght think that I have, but I can’t. I never can. I know what it felt like for him, that second where he dived off here. Do you see that? I taught him to fucking swim! I taught him to dive! And I have swum these waters, I have swum where he died. I have been down there, Deanna, so I know.’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘you don’t. Because you came up, and you took your next breath. You are still alive.’

  ‘But maybe I’m not,’ he says. He tilts his head. ‘Can you see that?’ he asks. He can see something, it seems, in the distance. Deanna stands up and looks.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asks.

  ‘There’s a light. In the water.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t see it.’

  ‘Not that one,’ he says. ‘This is … It’s coming from behind us. A reflection.’ She catches a glimpse; something yellow, and dulled.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks. And then she hears a noise, coming from behind them; coming from the road. She turns and looks towards the car, and she sees the light that she thought was coming from the town now closer, and coming closer still, the dull light of a flame, cutting through the branches of the woods. And not just one, three of them, two smaller than the first. The noise, a static of feet on leaves, cracking branches as they go. No voices in the darkness. This is meant to be a surprise.

  She sees a man at the top of the road; a hat and a beard and a cane, and she knows that it is Trent Henderson, and that this is what she has done.

  They are coming like a swarm; everybody from the town, armed with their guns if they have them. Hunting rifles and shotguns and pistols, no doubt, and they wear clothes more befitting a hunting trip than a visit to see some of their neighbors. Deanna watches them come over the hill in the distance. They are only a few minutes away.

  ‘Get inside,’ Laurence says.

  ‘We should find out what they’re here for,’ Deanna says. She knows, already, and so does he.

  ‘Get inside,’ he says. He stands behind her and ushers her. ‘Are the girls awake?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Okay,’ he tells her. ‘Go and wake them and make sure that they’re safe.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

  ‘Deanna, please!’ he shouts. He bares his teeth, and she sees the whiteness of his gums; the roots of his teeth, the thin lines of the muscles around his neck and jaw as he stretches to his shout. He’s barely even physical. He walks to the door and opens it, and he stands outside. ‘Stay in here,’ he says. He pulls the door shut behind him.

  She thinks about other ways of escape: maybe getting into the lake, diving into it, off the end of the dock and swimming. She can’t do it, she’s sure, but that doesn’t stop her thinking of it, imagining it. She looks out of the back window at the stillness of the water and then rushes to the window at the foot of the stairs.

  Deanna watches Laurence as he stands at the edge of the house’s porch. He puts one hand onto the strut that holds the arch up above the doorway and waits for them to get closer, watching them all. Trying to not make eye contact, so much, but sizing them up. There are twenty of them, maybe thirty. Deanna counts five guns, their black glinting. Here, the porch light is on, so she knows that they will be able to see Laurence. But the gulf between them is just wide enough to fall into darkness. She looks at her husband – strange to call him that, because the name, the title, they feel almost absent, almost moot – and his eyes are tipped down. He isn’t looking at them. She wonders if he is scared.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks. His voice is muffled through the wood; a house this old, the sound carries in through the gaps between the boards that make up the walls, but it’s not quite enough. Deanna opens the window slightly. He waits, because maybe they don’t hear him; maybe he wasn’t speaking loudly enough. They come closer, the gulf thinning. ‘I asked if I could help you. You’re on private property.’

  They stop walking. Trent Henderson steps forward. He holds a torch in one hand; a decorated pistol in the other, the handle made of ivory, a pattern curled on it in metals. He speaks for the group.

  ‘Laurence, we’ve known each other how long now?’

  ‘Years.’

  ‘Would you say that I have known the flavor of your character?’

  ‘Yes,’ Laurence says.

  ‘So when I say that I am here for your benefit, you know that I have no reason to lie to you.’

  ‘You’ve brought guns.’

  ‘That’s how you parlay. Those’re the rules, Laurence: bring to the talk that which your fellow man brings.’ He holds the gun up, closer to the flame light, showing it off. ‘Listen, we can end this now. You put down your gun and come to us, and we take you in.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Why would we lie?’ From behind Henderson, Deputy Robards steps forward.

  ‘Laurence, we’re here for the good of your family. That’s it. Nothing more.’ Henderson turns one hand towards Laurence, and opens it. To show how transparent he is, and how he can be trusted. He rubs his chin. ‘All we want to do is chat with you. Maybe get you some help.’

  Laurence steps backwards. ‘Go home,’ he says. ‘Take yourselves back to town. We’ll leave here and we won’t trouble you again. But you leave us alone.’

  ‘Or what?’ Robards asks.

  ‘Or you know how this ends,’ Laurence says.

  She has never heard him speak like that before. Deanna watches as he pulls the gun from his pocket, and the posse – because that is what it is – shift their postures, preparing. She sees the men at the back of the pack lit by the torches, men who have a reputation, raise their guns and check them as if they might have lost bullets in that exchange. One pops his shotgun open and pulls shells from his pocket, loads them into the barrels. That gun, Deanna is sure, is not used for hunting. It likely wouldn’t leave enough of the animal to claim as a trophy. Laurence steps inside and shuts the door behind him; he turns his back to it, as if they are going to rush at him and he has to keep it standing.

  Deanna goes to the girls and wakes them up, kissing them on their foreheads. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘you have to stay in here, no matter what you hear from downstairs, okay?’

  Lane sits up. ‘Is it dad?’

  ‘There are some people here to talk to him, is all. They’re angry.’

  ‘Because he won’t let us go?’ Lane asks. Deanna looks at her and Alyx and doesn’t answer.

  ‘Just stay here.’ She pulls the cellphone from her pocket and she shows Lane how to hold it so that the battery stays against the connectors, giving it enough power to turn on. ‘Keep this here,’ she says. ‘And if you need to, call the police.’ She thinks about Robards out there with them, treacherously claiming that he is there to protect Laurence. ‘No. Call Amit. His is the last dialled number. Tell him what’s happening and he’ll help, okay?’

  ‘You want me to call the police?’ Lane asks.

  ‘They’re already here,’ Deanna says.

  She stands in the stairwell. She thinks how easy this would be if she heard a gunshot now, before she even got down to the ground floor. How then, this would be over.

  At least, she thinks, that would be an ending.

  He trembles in the room. He leans against the glass and he looks out to where Sean was. Everything pauses; the moment seems to hang as if it’s broken. It is, Deanna thinks, almost as if Sean is here. He is watching this and wondering what might have been, or could have been. Different things.

  ‘Why won’t you let us go?’

  ‘Why do you want me to?’

  ‘Because we’re so scared.’ Of you, she doesn’t say, and of what is outside. We are terrified of it all. She stands by the front door. Laurence has always been reasonable. That’s been a part of who he is. But he is not the same man, Deanna reminds herself; he hasn’t been for over a year now. ‘The girls are frightened, Laurence.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  He nods. ‘When all I am trying to do is protec
t you.’ He puts both hands on the glass of the door and he stretches out, pushing back against it. ‘I mean, this isn’t for me. None of this is for me, Deanna. This is for us. All of us. You, me, Lane, the twins. All of us.’

  ‘Not the twins,’ she says. ‘This is not for Sean.’

  It is as if he forgot, for a second; and now, he looks out over the dock and the water, lit by the moon’s reflection as if from below, and he makes a noise that Deanna has never heard before. It’s not quite a laugh or a howl, but something else, something from below them. He beats the glass of the door with both hands and it cracks; a sliver at first, coming from below his right fist, but that sliver grows and creaks outwards, rushing to create a cobweb of cracks. The glass fights itself and falls outwards, onto the decking, a crash, a shattering. Laurence doesn’t jump backwards. Instead, he lets the pieces fall, and he stands there, in his suit. A shout comes from outside, carrying through the whole house.

  ‘What’s happening in there?’ Trent Henderson asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ Laurence says, too quiet to be heard. He pulls the gun from his pocket, and he holds it; but his grip is loose, and unconvincing.

  ‘Please,’ Deanna asks. ‘Let me get the girls out of here. They shouldn’t be around this. I’ll stay, and we can work this out.’

  ‘We’re a family,’ he says. ‘That’s always been the point. A family is a whole, and we have been apart.’ He is softening. She knows; she sees it.

  ‘Laurence,’ she says. His finger is on the trigger, but it is not cocked. This can be done, she thinks. ‘We have to go,’ she tells him.

  ‘You can’t,’ he says, but he sounds unconvincing and unconvinced. Maybe, Deanna thinks, he sees the end himself. She steps forward; she wonders if she can reach for the gun, and take it, and maybe—

  A crackle of glass behind him; a boot crunching it underfoot. It’s unexpected, and Laurence turns to look. It’s Robards. He has his pistol drawn, and he’s caught because he’s clumsy. He looks confused, blindsided. He drops his mouth to an O and he raises his gun at Laurence. He looks as if he is going to pull the trigger, but he doesn’t get the chance. Laurence does first, and the noise fills the room; a clap like thunder. Deanna thinks for a second that it will bring the house down around them, it’s so loud. Robards falls backwards onto the decking. He isn’t dead; instead, he rolls to his stomach and he tries to crawl away, over the broken glass.