by Lee Thompson
She thought about it for a second, and said, “It was like a flash flood, an act of God. But for whose benefit, if anyone’s, we’ll never know.”
• • •
The paramedics coming in, probing and testing Mickey’s corpse, woke Jack. Aria had coffee waiting for him in the kitchen. And he sat and drank with her for more than an hour, enjoying her company, the silence between them. He could see that she was as hurt as he was.
Men had crippled him, and that was fine, he knew the risk he was taking with Aria—the same risk anyone else would have taken, but he deserved, he believed, the judgment which Mitch had brought upon him.
But Janice hadn’t deserved his betrayal, nor her death in their home at the hands of lunatics.
And Aiden, gifted with something strange and beautiful, hadn’t deserved what anyone had done to him.
Jack sat in his wheelchair, looking back, and looking forward.
He said, “If it wasn’t for that little girl, I’d kill Mitch. I’d burn this town down.”
Aria waited.
He cleared his throat and said, “I need some time alone. Then I need to see if any of those assholes who tore my house apart plan to pay for the repairs. Thanks for all you’ve done for me. I mean that.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded and rolled his chair to the front door and eased himself down the two small steps. His van was a wreck, the windows cracked and smeared with road grime, dents that hadn’t been there before and unnoticeable to someone else, sticking out to him like wounds in its flesh. He was grateful that the motorized ramp still worked, but inside it smelled like Mitch’s cologne and, faintly, of old fear and nursed bitterness, and the sweat of innocent children.
He drove to the water tower. Police and fire and ambulance vehicles had cordoned off the parking lot of the school. Normally there would have been gawkers, but after last night, he figured people probably felt bad enough, thinking that perhaps one of them had done this, thinking that it was the right thing to do at the time.
He pulled his van right out on the pasture and parked twenty feet or so from the spot where Aiden had died. His hands shook as he left the ramp and wheeled himself through the slush, around flashlights still glowing dimly, and cigarette butts cast aside in the snow.
The heat from the explosion at the school had melted most of the snow, but there were still pockets, and the only things showing in the bald patches were areas of last year’s clover. He stopped in the area he figured Aiden had ceased being his son and become one of God’s, and he wiped his eyes and listened to the chatter of birds high up on the water tower, and the voices of the men working to clear the doorways of the ruined school.
He doubted any of the kids went today, not after the whole town was out last night, bus drivers, teachers, the principal’s son butchered and thrown from the tower by Pine.
Destruction all around them.
And for what, he wondered, for what?
Life didn’t make much sense sometimes.
Sometimes you found you had nothing left to hold on to.
He wiggled his toes, unsure where exactly Aiden struck the earth and left his mark on it. The ground was trampled by footprints. He wiggled his toes again, without thinking for a second, and then he heard a car pull onto the field, park a ways back from his van and kill the engine.
He could feel every muscle in his legs flexing. It hurt, in a good way, a natural way. He scanned the flashlights, ten, fifteen feet out. Their lights were dim. But near the foot boards of his chair, shining from a clump of clover there was a sliver of bright light. It touched the tip of his foot.
Jack turned his chair and let it wash over him, silent and mysterious, healing and warm. And he felt stronger than he’d ever felt, as if he could lift a mountain, as if he could climb to the heavens and reclaim his wife and boy.
He tried to remember Aiden’s last words.
A car door shut.
He hoped it was Mitch.
He’d let him get close enough, and then spring on him, and this field of blood would find new wine to drink.
But he heard her walking cautiously, could smell her, such a unique scent of womanhood and desire and rightness. He moved his foot as she stopped beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder. She said, “What are you doing here, Jack? None of this was your fault.”
He lifted his hand and held it over hers. Her flesh was warm, her bones small, fragile. He lifted both of his feet from the chair, stuck them straight out in front of him, pointed his toes toward the water tower and then back toward them, and then he lowered them slowly.
Aria said, “How?”
“It’s in the clover,” Jack said.
She knelt, her knees wet, her fingers separating the patch until she recoiled.
Her face paled considerably, it made the blister on her jaw an angrier red.
He said, “What is it?”
“I can’t touch it.”
He wasn’t sure if anyone was watching, and if so, he didn’t want them to see him stand. He plopped onto the ground, soaking the seat of his pants, but the cold felt good in a way. He did as she had done, and then he saw and Aria took another step back, in disgust, as Jack lifted the eyeball from the weeds and cupped it in his hand. He thought, sadly, My son lost something when he fell...
He said to Aria, “Find me something to put this in.”
She retreated.
Jack held Aiden’s eye, wet and light and warm in his palm.
She came back a minute later with a coin purse he’d never seen her use. He slipped the eye into it and closed it and said, “I can go on playing the cripple. No one has to know but me and you.”
She touched the side of his cheek again, with her knuckles now, and it sent a pang through his middle. She said so quietly he could barely hear her over the pounding of his heart, “If we leave here, together, you can be anyone you want to be, wherever we end up.”
Her smile was beatific, her gaze full of heat, the corners of her mouth delicate.
He put an arm around her waist and pulled her closer and took her hand and kissed the back of it.
Jack did not promise her anything, not in a world where he never knew what might happen next. But there was something in his face she must have seen, something he had not yet even knew existed inside him, because she laughed and bent over and kissed him.
He was surprised to find himself kissing her back. But his thoughts were not on the warmness of her lips, or the heat of her body, or the places they might go to start again.
He was thinking of his wife, a woman he had not deserved, and who had taught him so much, a woman he had failed in more ways than he could count. Yet here he was, with someone else, strangely offered a second chance.
And Jack was thinking of his son, and how Aiden had given what he could to those he could help, without hope of thanks or return. Traits he had not learned from his father, but beautiful things nonetheless, no matter their origin.
He could see clearly in his mind, that glimmer of light, of goodness, which everyone harbored. And that light would always possess the face of his boy. And gathered around his son’s serious and sometimes hopeful expressions, there was an endless darkness rampant with every person’s worst fears, an emptiness the light must forever pierce.
LEE THOMPSON is the author of eighteen books, including A Beautiful Madness, It’s Only Death, With Fury in Hand, and After the Fog Clears. The dominating threads weaved throughout his work are love, loss, and learning how to live again. A firm believer in the enduring power of the human spirit, Lee believes that stories, no matter their format, set us on the path of transformation. He is represented by the extraordinary Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary.
Visit him online at www.leethompsonfiction.com.
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