by John Hart
At the water’s edge, he tried to hold the images that troubled him, but the more he squeezed, the more elusive they seemed. He’d stood on this very ground. So had Johnny.
Why had they been so afraid?
The more he worked the question, the more it disturbed him. Fear was not even the right word. He’d been terrified.
Looking at the swamp now, it was hard to believe. Everything appeared soft in the morning light, the islands distant, the waters dappled.
Had they really come to this place?
Jack stood for a long time, but like every dream he’d ever had, the images faded until only glimmers remained.
Was it a nightmare or was it real?
When Jack returned to the cabin, he found Johnny feeding twigs into the coals of last night’s fire. “Good morning, Counselor. Coffee in five.”
Jack hesitated, watching his friend for a sign that he remembered anything about last night. His attention fixed on the fire, Johnny looked as he had on a hundred other mornings, half asleep and relaxed. He built the fire up, put an old coffeepot on the grate. “There’s bread,” he said. “I’ll make bacon in a bit.”
“You feel all right, Johnny?”
“You kidding? I feel great.”
He poked at the coals, rubbed his cheek and left a smudge of soot. He’d not yet looked up, so Jack took a chair across the fire. “How’d you sleep?”
“Deep and sound.”
“Johnny, look at me.” Johnny did. “You went to sleep last night in the tree. You woke in the cabin.”
Johnny’s eyes glazed for a moment; then he shrugged. “Sleepwalking, I guess. It happens.”
“That doesn’t scare you?”
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“You remember nothing about last night?”
“We stayed up late. We drank too much.”
“What else?”
“We talked about your dad in prison, your mom in that shit-box trailer. You told me how it feels to practice law. You fell down once, taking a leak.”
“That wasn’t funny.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Johnny laughed again, but Jack was still serious. “That’s it? That’s all?”
“Of course that’s not all.” Johnny stopped poking at the fire. “We finished the manchego before the bourbon. You liked the catfish, but thought you’d swallowed a bone. We smoked cigars, told jokes, solved the riddles of the universe. It was dinner, Jack, like every other dinner we’ve ever had out here.”
“What about after?”
“There was no after. I went to bed. I woke up. Here we are.”
Jack stopped pushing. Two minutes later he made up his mind. “Listen, I’m going to get out of here.”
“What? Seriously?”
Jack stood and smoothed palms across his thighs. “I’m not feeling it.”
“Okay. Well, shit.” Johnny stood, too. “You want me to walk you out?”
“No, I’m good.”
Jack found his boots and pulled them on. Johnny watched, conflicted. Days like this meant something to both of them. Normally they fished or hunted or shot skeet; breakfast was always a big deal. Johnny opened his mouth twice before he finally spoke. “About the lawyer business—”
“It’s not that.”
“Then, why are you leaving?”
Jack picked up his jacket and looked across the clearing. He’d never fully understood Johnny’s desire to live in this place, but if he chose to live as a hermit, it was Jack’s place to be there for him. Part of that stemmed from childhood and mutual obligation; part of it was that they lived as brothers. That meant they trusted, supported, accepted. But today was different, and Jack felt the change as surely as he smelled coffee on the morning air.
Johnny was lying.
* * *
By the time Jack returned to the small apartment he kept above a bakery downtown, his suspicion had only grown. Something in Johnny’s laugh, and in the way his eyes moved. With the door locked and lights off, Jack pulled off muddy clothes, lay on the bed, and considered the very real chance his best friend was a liar. The thought troubled him, and Jack chewed on it for a long time, hating it; but it was in dreams that a more disturbing truth found him. He stood in black water, and in the wan light Johnny was shirtless beside him. His eyes were half-closed, his hands turned up as if to catch a falling rain. Everything was real: the water on his shins, the cold air and fear. Jack watched Johnny point, but was afraid to look.
Do you see?
Jack didn’t see; didn’t want to.
Jack …
Jack looked that time, but not where Johnny pointed. He looked at eyes glazed black and muscles that gathered and twitched. Maybe Johnny was afraid. Maybe he was like Jack.
Tell me what you see.
But the fear was too real, and Jack too ashamed. He closed his eyes, and when they opened, he was awake in an apartment that smelled of bread baking. The sky outside was dim, the sheets twisted and damp.
“It’s not possible.”
But it was.
Johnny’s stepfather had spoken to Jack of injuries from a fall, of bruises black as ink and cuts so deep, they went halfway to the bone. That’s why he’d called Jack in the first place, because Johnny had fallen and almost died. With the bourbon and the mist, Jack had forgotten, but not now. He wanted to deny the sudden truth, but blinked and saw Johnny, as he’d been last night, and not just in the dream. He was shirtless and still and flawless.
There wasn’t a mark on him.
CHAPTER THREE
That night—for the second night in a row—Jack drank more than he should. It started with a six-pack and ended with a liquor bottle on the parapet that circled the roof of his building. He was angry with himself and frightened, staring north to where storm clouds broke above the distant swamp. Even here he felt the dampness of it, the electrical charge. The storm was moving for the city, and he thought he might remain where he stood, to let it lift him up or flatten him against the roof. The thought was illogical, but Jack had begun to doubt reality and, because of that, himself. Awareness and focus were the levers he’d used to break the prison of childhood fears. What remained when he no longer knew his own mind?
“Damn it, Johnny.”
Jack lifted the bottle and swallowed liquor that burned all the way down. He was a lawyer now, and grown. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He drank again, choking. Beneath him were movement and light, the sounds of the city on Saturday night. It was late, and he should be asleep. That’s what new associates did. They slept and worked and fed the machine. Since Alyssa’s death, it’s all Jack had ever wanted, a life of rationality and resolve. That’s what the law was, and what it was designed to make of people. He could hear the professors now:
Fact and law and precedent …
Jack laughed, and the sound frightened him because there was no rationality in it. It sounded broken and wild, and that’s exactly how childhood with Johnny had ended, not in quietness and time, but in a sudden rush of secrets and death and superstitious dread. That’s what Jack knew of precedent. He could share the thought with Johnny, and Johnny would nod because they’d walked the road together: Alyssa’s disappearance and the long search, her body, when they found it, all the others who’d died and suffered in the year she’d been gone. Johnny would say, Yes, I remember, and Yes, there is a line between good and evil. But people could walk the same road and see different things. In the years since childhood, Johnny had taken the pragmatic view that people were cruel and selfish and base. Jack recognized that, too—it’s why the law mattered—but his need for order ran more deeply than even Johnny understood; because Jack had learned different things on that road, and not all of them were rational and real. Where Johnny chose to see cause and effect, Jack saw the hand of God, and of the devil himself. That wasn’t hyperbole or false belief; he knew it like he knew his bones: that the world ran shadowed and deep, that evil was real and had a face. Beca
use of that, Jack sought order, solidity, control.
But there were no such things.
Not if what happened in the swamp was real.
It was an ugly thought, and heavy inside him. He told himself he was foolish, but didn’t believe it; said Johnny was telling the truth but didn’t believe that, either. Something happened in that godforsaken swamp, and Jack could not drink the conviction away. So he watched the storm instead, urging it on, thinking it might be strong enough to sweep the roof clean of dust and heat and worry. But the storm turned east before it reached the city. It flickered yellow and spit rain, grew small and left him where he stood. Jack watched it roll away, and by the time the sky was empty, so was the bottle.
* * *
When he woke a few hours later, the light outside was gray. That was a habit born of college and law school: early to rise and early to work. Few days offered hours to waste, and Jack knew the value of concerted effort. He’d finished Wake Forest University first in his class and Duke Law at number two. He could have gone big city, big salary; but Jack wanted to prove something to the place that shit all over his childhood.
Besides, Johnny was here.
Rolling in the bed, he lifted his watch from the table and squinted through bloody eyes. Six seventeen. He’d overslept.
“Lovely.”
It was Sunday morning, but that didn’t matter. Being a lawyer worked best if you were a partner, and that didn’t come easily or cheap. Nine years, he’d been told—that’s what it normally took to make partner. Jack planned to do it in five, so he’d made a deal with himself. Two Saturdays a month, he’d spend with Johnny. The other days he’d work, and not just any kind of work. He’d work the way he had in law school. Fifteen-hour days. Sixteen if he ate at his desk.
By six fifty he was showered and dressed. The walk to the office took eight minutes, and he stopped on the way to pick up coffee and a bagel. The building was empty, but Jack didn’t mind. He liked the quiet halls and the cleaned, processed smell. At his desk, he sipped coffee and considered the practice he’d chosen to join. The firm was medium-sized but highly regarded. Raven County was a small market, but the firm drew clients from all over the South. That kind of accomplishment took time and effort, and hard, smart lawyers. Even now, there was talk of expansion—an office in Charlotte, maybe, and then another in Raleigh. After that, anything could happen. Washington. Atlanta.
Jack moved to the window and stared east. The prison was too far away to see, but he pictured it there, and in it, his father. Did that have something to do with his decision to stay in Raven County? He asked the same question about his mother, knowing she’d be at church already or at home on folded knees. She lived in an old trailer under a dead tree, and blamed Jack for everything wrong in her life. Because of that, her prayers were the spiteful kind, and other believers saw that in her. They’d tried to change her and failed, pushed her from one church to the next, each one a little poorer, a little more desperate. Last Jack heard, she attended service under a canvas tent pitched on a bald spot by the river. The preacher came from southern Alabama, and was prone to long bouts of caterwauling and sweat. Beyond that, Jack didn’t really know or care. The man could be a revivalist, a snake handler, or a charlatan. It was all the same to Jack, who believed that God—when he chose—connected to people in a very personal manner.
Sometimes that was okay.
At times it hurt like hell.
Jack gave himself another minute to dwell on sin and the past, then got to work. And when Jack worked, it was in a state of total concentration. Sounds dulled; surroundings blurred. He worked a single file for five hours. Filings. Briefs. Deposition summaries. The hangover hurt, but he powered through it. This was what he did, and where he thrived. Details. Strategy. Minutiae. He worked through lunch, and by two, there were others in the building. He heard muted conversations, a ding in the hall as the elevator rose and fell. Jack stood, once, to stretch his back, and watched a car pull into the lot below. It was long and silver, and when its door opened, a woman stepped out. The angle did funny things, but Jack knew she was petite and pretty and dangerously smart. Her name was Leslie Green, a partner with expensive clothes and the sharpest, prettiest eyes Jack had ever seen. He watched her to the building, and lost her at the door.
After that, he tried to work, but read the same paragraph six times without absorbing a word. He made a seventh try, but knew the signs. His mind was twisted around a different axle, and that was Johnny’s fault.
“Well, goddamn.”
Jack considered options for about ten seconds, and in the elevator pushed the button for three.
The appellate division was on three.
So was Leslie Green.
He thought about her as the elevator dropped. It’s not that he disliked her—she was probably a fine person—but on three occasions she’d cornered him, and each time wanted the same thing: Johnny’s life, the story.
She wanted to know if it was true.
The first time it happened, she’d come to Jack’s office and been blunt about it. She had the book in her hand and a smile on her face.
Leslie Green, she’d said. Partner. Appellate Division. Are you the same Jack Cross that’s in this book?
She’d tilted the book so he could see the jacket, and her face reflected the same hunger he’d seen so many times before. People got turned on by the story—the tragedy and violence, the remarkable tales of Johnny as a child. The photographs didn’t hurt, either. He’d been striking even at thirteen, what with the cheekbones and jet-black hair and wild, dark eyes. The most famous picture was taken in a half-wrecked car in front of the hospital, and showed him streaked with blood and ash and berry juice. He was small behind the wheel, his arm still clutched by the girl he’d saved. He’d been cut a dozen times, his chest sliced open. Dull marks striped his face. Feathers and rattles and copperhead skulls hung from leather thongs around his neck. The papers called him the wild Indian, the warrior, the little chief. Some said Johnny was unhinged, a danger. Others thought he was the bravest child ever to come through Raven County. When Johnny’s sister went missing, he’d spent a year looking. He’d tracked pedophiles and killers, gone alone to places so dangerous, even cops feared to go. By the time it was over, he’d found not only his sister, but the remains of seven more victims besides, including his own father. In the process, he’d exposed a ring of kidnappers and killers, gone into the wilds with an escaped convict, and done what the police could not. The story was a sensation, and the networks carried it coast to coast. For a while there was talk of a movie. The book had been inevitable. It came out on a Tuesday, and spent three years on the bestseller lists. Even then, no one knew the full story, not the reporters or the cops, not even the guy who wrote the book. Nearly a decade had passed, and Johnny carried his secrets the same as Jack, quietly and heavily. They didn’t talk about how things happened or why they survived. The unanswered questions were even bigger.
So, Jack was used to interest from outsiders. Even in college and law school, people put it together: Jack’s name and his hometown, the old stories and the stunted arm. It was the book that did it. People loved true crime, and the book made every “best of” list ever published. That kept the story front and center, and with the ten-year anniversary fast approaching, the publisher was going back to print, planning a big push. They’d asked Jack to be a part of that, and Jack guessed they were looking for Johnny, too. They wanted a tour, interviews, talk shows. They sensed a bigger story, same as everyone else; wanted reasons behind the feathers and rattles and skulls, the details of what happened when Johnny and Jack went deep in the swamp and came out with a killer half-dead in the back of a truck. It was part of Jack’s life, for good or ill. So when Leslie Green appeared in his door, Jack had leaned back in the chair, looked her in those pretty eyes and told the smallest truth he possibly could.
Yeah, he said. That’s me in the book.
She’d sat opposite his desk, crossed lovely legs, and of
fered a smile designed to bend the will of men. Tell me everything, she’d said; but Jack had not. The truth she wanted belonged to Johnny and Jack and no one else. She didn’t like his answer or the flat, unafraid way he offered it. She’d left angry, and on two other occasions cornered him with the same questions. That made three times in Jack’s first week at the firm. Three times he’d angered a partner.
Not a good start, he thought.
And worse now.
Lights were off on the third floor, and every office door closed but one. It was the corner office all the way down, Leslie’s office. She looked up when Jack knocked, and frowned for an instant before one corner of her mouth twisted the other way. “Do you have a minute?” Jack asked.
“I guess that depends.”
“May I?”
Jack gestured, and she dipped her chin. “Sit.”
Jack did, and Leslie studied his face, the suit, the small fingers curled tight in the hollow of his sleeve. She took her time, and Jack endured it. She was more than pretty, he thought, midthirties with ivory skin and blond hair. She had a tattoo on her wrist, a chip on her shoulder, and had made partner in seven years. She was brilliant, hardworking, and cold, and Jack wondered what she saw from across the desk, thinking it was the bad arm and ill-fitting suit, the boy from the book, grown older.
“It caused quite a stir,” she said, “when people in this firm realized who you were. The hiring committee didn’t tell us the new associate was famous.”
“I’m not famous.”
“Your friend certainly is.”
The smile notched a quarter-inch higher, and Jack added unyielding to the list of her attributes. “I want you to take a case,” he said. “Pro bono.”
“I choose my own cases.”
“I understand that.”
“Is there some reason, then, that you’re wasting my time?”
“I need an appellate lawyer,” Jack said. “A good one.”
