by Meg Jackson
There was silence as Alicia and Becky paused in their ranting, both looking into their webcams with concern.
“I’m sorry, I know, this is like…way much to deal with,” Becky finally said. Alicia nodded.
“You don’t have to decide anything right now. Maybe you should talk to your dad first?”
“Yeah, talk to your dad. See why he reacted that way. Then…well, then you can figure out what you wanna do,” Becky said, her voice loaded. I could tell she was really trying hard not to leap down my throat again. I could also tell that she was trying not to say “I told you so”: she had been the only one who’d ever suggested what I was doing with Boon was wrong.
“Guys…what if I really screwed up? What if…”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Sammy,” Alicia interrupted.
“You were just having fun and getting to know someone. You made a decision and you enjoyed it and you couldn’t have known that all this was going to happen,” Becky said, nodding in agreement.
“You should never feel bad about something like that. I mean, you totally impressed me, going after what you wanted like that, and even if it ends in a massive crash and burn, you’ll always have my respect, girl,” Alicia said with a smile. I found myself grinning along. It was amazing, no matter how bad things looked, that my friends could still manage to put a smile on my face. I loved them for that.
“Thanks…I needed that,” I said, breathing normally for the first time since Boon had shown up.
“Of course, Sammy. You know we’re always here for you,” Becky said, leaning in and smooching the webcam.
“Talk to your dad, then call us! Is it really bad that I’m kinda pumped on all this drama?” Alicia asked, a sly smile on her face.
“YES,” Becky and I answered in unison.
“You’re a total bitch,” I said, laughing. Alicia shrugged and leaned in to the camera, also pretending to kiss it.
“Whatever, I love you,” she said. “Now go talk to your dad!”
As I signed off, I wondered if I should give Mom and Dad a little more time to hash it out. In the meantime, I figured, I could pace my room and think about every worst-case-scenario in the world. I knew that I’d drive myself crazy just sitting in my room alone, so I made the decision to at least try. I slipped out of my room quietly and hovered near the top of the stairs. I could hear Mom and Dad talking, loudly, from downstairs.
“She deserves an explanation, Bill. Whatever went on between them…”
“Jesus, Jillian! How can you even bring that up! When I think of our Samantha getting involved in that…that…”
“She’s 18! She’s going to meet boys. She’s going to like boys. She’s going to like the wrong sort of boy sometimes. You, of all people, should know what a guy like that can do…”
“Don’t you ever compare me to that scum, Jillian. I might have had a rough side when you met me, but…”
“A rough side? Honey, you better make an appointment to be checked for early dementia. If I recall, you spent the better part of junior year in a cloud of smoke…and most of senior year in the drunk tank!”
“This isn’t about me, Jillian! This is about our daughter making eyes with some biker trash! And not just any biker trash, the fucking son of the man who…”
“How old do you think that boy was, huh? Do you really think he even knew what was happening then?”
“Well, he’s old enough now to know to stay the hell away from good girls like Samantha!”
“Okay, okay, I’m not saying I’m crazy about the idea either, honey, but you can’t blame her. Or him! Boys like girls! He followed her all the way from Vegas! I mean, does that sound like a guy who wants to throw Samantha away like a used Kleenex?”
“I don’t care what he wants to do with Samantha; he’s never going to have anything to do with her ever again!”
“Stop!” I finally said, my heart beating fast. The voices stopped. I tip-toed down the stairs, which was silly, since they obviously knew I was there, but I felt like I was an intruder in my own home, breaking and entering their conversation. “Please, just stop.”
Mom and Dad stared at me at the bottom of the stairs, mingled expressions of confusion and concern on their faces. I stared back, trying to look grown up, trying to look like I could handle it.
“Just…please, tell me. I…I need to know. I’m afraid, Daddy,” I said, stuttering over my words, making eye contact with my father. I needed him to know how important this was to me, that it wasn’t just some crush gone wrong. I knew that telling him I was afraid (which I was) was my best shot at getting him to talk. Daddy could never let me go around feeling scared. And this time, he knew, telling me that he would “take care of everything” wasn’t going to cut it.
I was too old for that now.
I think, now, when I look back on it, that moment was all about that one realization: I was too old for a lot of things. I was too old to be kept in the dark. I was too old to not take risks. I was too old to entrust my safety with just my parents. I was growing up. I was making my own mistakes. A look of sadness came over my father’s face as he seemed to contemplate all this. Then he nodded.
“You’re right, Samantha. You deserve to know what that was all about,” he said, glancing at my mother, who gave him an encouraging look.
“Come,” he said, gesturing to the living room. We filed in and sat down, Mom and Dad on the couch, me on the loveseat facing them. I twiddled my fingers in my lap. I wanted to hear, I didn’t want to hear.
It didn’t matter what I wanted anymore.
“Ten years ago…geeze, Samantha, you were eight. Ten years. How did…” Dad got a glassy look in his eyes, his sentence trailing off. Mom coughed, bringing him back on track. I knew that part of it was for show, just Dad stalling telling me the story. Dad sighed.
“Ten years ago, I was a police officer, just a regular cop. There was a fellow on the force with me, named Giordino. Danny Giordino. He was a good guy. We never talked much, weren’t close, but you know. Cops are family. He bought rounds at the bar. He had a wife, no kids. Young, same age as me. A whole world in front of him…”
Dad seemed to get lost in the story again, in his memories.
“He coulda been Sheriff, I guess,” he finally said after a long moment. Shaking his head as if to rid himself of the thought, he continued in a no-nonsense tone.
“We had some trouble back then with a group of bikers who’d rented out one of the hotels. Bad guys. This was in the 90’s, and there were all sorts of ATM scams, still are, but worse back then before we had the technology to stop some of them. These guys were stealing money left and right, credit card fraud, identity theft. Plus, they had something going on with a couple local dealers, slinging heroin.
Samantha, this was serious business. Serious, serious business. We waited for months to dig up enough dirt on them to put the leader away, if not the whole horde. But, you know, things just moved slowly. Trying to gather evidence, trying to make a case that would stick. These guys were as smart as they were bad.
But we got them, finally. We had enough to make it stick. We got re-enforcements to come up from Billings, got ready to swarm the hotel, take ‘em all down. But when we got there…
I don’t know how they left without anyone noticing. I mean, those bikes make a lot of noise, you’d think someone would have noticed. But no one did…the hotel was empty, Samantha. They’d cleared out. The only thing left? Two bodies. Dead bodies. One of them was one of their chicks, a worn-out looking gal, couldn’t have been much older than you. Poor thing was probably doomed from birth. Worst case of meth mouth I’ve ever seen.
And the other body was Danny Giordino. He was…I’ll just, I’ll never forget it. It’s one of those moments as a cop when you realize how…how dangerous it all is. You were so young, Samantha, and I saw that body, and I thought, what if I never see my little girl grow up?” Dad was welling up now; I felt like my heart was breaking.
Have you ever seen your father cry? I
t’s something most people would be a lot better off never seeing, I’d wager. I felt my own eyes filling with tears, saw my mother’s head hanging low, as we sat in silence.
“Two bodies. One cop, one woman. We couldn’t tell, from the way the bodies were splayed out, who’d shot who. We knew she didn’t shoot him. He might have shot her. We didn’t know. We didn’t know how he’d gotten there, either. He wasn’t on a call. He was a good cop, though. And I think…
Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think he went there to try and save that little boy. See, the woman, she was shacked up with the leader of the group. Their president, so to speak. Tank Culver,” Dad said, his eyes now growing cold. The name shook me. I knew that was Boon’s father. I didn’t need Dad to finish the story; I had all the pieces now, could figure it out for myself. But I wanted to hear him tell it. Tell me. Make it make sense.
“Real name John Culver. Biker name Tank. He and this woman had a son. That young man,” Dad said, his tone growing darker with each word. “That young man you’ve been…fraternizing with. I recognized him. He couldn’t have been more than 12 at the time, but I recognized him. After Giordino, I studied all our surveillance for days. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I think Giordino went there to try and get her and the kid out before the place got raided. So they wouldn’t have to see…”
Dad trailed off. We sat in silence, the ticking clock the only noise. Finally, he sighed again.
“I know it’s not his fault, what happened to Giordino. I know that, Samantha. But he’s bad news. Boys like that, they grow up bad, and they only get worse. If he’s got half the piss and vinegar in his blood that his dad had…I think that’s who did it, by the way. I’m pretty sure, it was John Culver. Who else? That boy’s no good. I don’t want him in my city, I don’t want him in my block, I don’t want him near my daughter,” Dad said, finishing with a stare that turned my blood to ice.
I sat, turning the story around and around in my brain. I imagined Boon as a young boy, a pre-teen, on the back of his father’s bike, fleeing the scene of the crime. I imagined two bodies, pools of blood. I imagined my father standing over a dead cop. I imagined flashbulbs taking pictures. I imagined a woman.
“How awful,” I finally managed to squeak out. Mom nodded gravely.
“Your father has his reasons, Samantha.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, baby. I am. I…I lost my cool. I just saw his face and it all came swimming back. All that blood…and me with a little girl at home and…I just, I lost it. I know, I went about it the wrong way. That was wrong of me. But I need you to understand…”
“I do, Daddy. I understand. I…get it. But…but what if he’s not like his dad? What if he’s different?” I regretted the questions as soon as they left my mouth. Dad’s face grew cold again.
“I don’t want you to take that risk, Samantha. Now, you know my side, I don’t want you to go digging for his. I’m serious about this, Samantha, this is not up for negotiations. You are never to contact that boy again. If he knows what’s good for him, he’s halfway to Portland by now, anyway. Samantha, if you care about me at all, you’ll promise, right here and right now, that you’ll let this go. You’ll have a good summer and meet a nice local boy and go to school and forget all about him.”
Dad’s face was cement, a brick wall, impenetrable. He meant all of this from the bottom of his heart. I could tell that. From the way he was speaking, from the look in his eyes, this was serious business. What could I do? I nodded.
“I promise, Dad,” I said, vaguely aware, in the back of my mind, that I was making a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.
18
I didn’t exactly get sent to my room after that, but it was clear the BBQ was off and I needed time to think. I didn’t call Alicia and Becky right away. There was enough for me to process on my own, without calling in extra opinions.
Dad’s story made sense: it made sense that he would react so violently to seeing Boon. It made sense why he wanted me to steer clear of him. It made sense in so many ways. It also made sense for me to follow his order never to see Boon again: it was clear, now, that he really was up to no good, at least as far as his gang was concerned. A few puffs on a joint was one thing, but heroin? Identity theft? Those were serious, serious things. And I was fresh out of high school: I had no business getting involved in any of that.
But then…he must have been so young then. He couldn’t really have had anything to do with all that. And was it really fair to judge the son by the sins of the father? He’d found me, come all that way, just to see me…didn’t that say something about him? He hadn’t needed to do all that: he could have just forgotten all about me, about our time together. It didn’t mean that he was a great guy, per say, but it meant something, right?
I paced my room, hands in fists. Suddenly, I remembered what Boon had slipped into my palm; I’d forgotten all about it. I dug my fingers into my pocket. It was small, square…pulling it out, I saw that it was a matchbox. Gateway Inn, it read on the front. So I knew where he was staying now. Whatever good that did me. It does you no good at all, because you’re not going to see him, I thought with one part of my brain.
Now you know where he is, you can see him, ask him, thought another part. I groaned and threw the matchbook on the bed. I texted Alicia and Becky, asking them to log back on to Skype. In seconds, we were in another video call.
I told them the story my father had told me. I watched their faces anxiously, making note of every expression and reaction. Becky had her eyes narrowed, following the story with concern. Alicia was leaning forward, wide-eyed, hanging on every word. When I finished, no one said anything for a long while.
“So…I mean, what do I do?” I finally asked, dying to hear their opinions.
“Go see him tonight,” Alicia said, nodding as though there could be no argument. I looked at Becky through the computer. She was biting her lip. I’d expected her to jump in immediately with “no way” or “don’t even think about it” and was surprised at her silence.
“Beck?” I questioned, prompting her.
“I don’t know, honest, I don’t. I mean, the sane part of me says Alicia is a moron and you should stay as far away from him as possible but…I mean, you’re kind of right. It’s not really fair to judge him by his dad, and if that’s all your dad is doing…I mean…I have my reservations about this whole thing, but, like, if I really thought he was a worthless asshole, I would never have let us go to that bar in the first place. There’s something good about him, at least.”
“Plus, I mean, don’t you remember when his friends were talking? They were saying that he and his dad were on the outs…remember? Remember his face after he talked to his dad? He wasn’t happy,” Alicia said.
“How can you even remember that? You were high as a kite,” Becky said to Alicia, who promptly rolled her eyes.
“C’mon guys, you know I’m not as dumb as I look,” she said. She was right; for someone who acted ditsy a lot of the time, Alicia was actually really smart, and she had remembered that moment when even I’d forgotten about it.
“Well, I mean, that’s true, he did look…I mean, but why are we even talking about this? My parents probably won’t ever let me leave the house again, and I’m definitely not going anywhere tonight,” I said, realizing that we could discuss it until the end of time and Boon would probably still be gone in the morning.
“Call him, ask him to stay, just for a while,” Alicia said. “Do it now!”
Becky nodded, not quite convinced but clearly willing to support me.
“If it’s what you want, Samantha, you have to. We’ll stay on the computer with you while you do it, if you want.”
I reached for my phone, hand shaking. I pulled up the texts Boon had sent me and called the number that sent them. There was no ringtone, it went straight to voicemail. And it wasn’t even his voice on the message, just an automated voice. He could have been using a burner phone for all I knew. I hung up, shaking my
head.
“It’s off,” I said.
“Text him,” Alicia pressed, excitement in her voice.
“Well, what do I say? ‘Sorry my dad tried to shoot you, why don’t you sit around for a few days until I’m allowed outside’?”
“Just…well, I mean, just say, like ‘please don’t leave yet’. Tell him you want to talk,” Becky suggested. I tapped the message out quickly, not wanting to give it another second to doubt myself.
The message sent, I put my phone down. Looking back up at my friends’ faces, I was at a loss.
“Well, what now?”
“Now…just wait,” Alicia said, shrugging. Great, my favorite thing, waiting, I thought, irritated and nervous. What if he never turned his phone back on? What if he did, and saw the message, and didn’t respond? What if he did?
Two hours later, he hadn’t texted me back. An hour later, my phone buzzed. My heart leapt up to my teeth. I closed my eyes as I picked it up:
Any news?
It was just Alicia. I sighed, both relieved and disappointed. I responded quickly, then threw my phone to the side and returned to what I’d been doing for the last three hours: pacing around my room, trying to read magazines, flipping through TV channels. It was pure torture. It was a million times worse than taking the SATs, a billion times worse than waiting for college acceptance letters.
I lay in bed, hands behind my head, trying to think of everything and nothing at the same time. At some point, much to my own surprise, I fell asleep. As I slept, I dreamt, one of the strangest dreams of my life.
In the dream, I was riding a motorcycle through a huge suburban town: it wasn’t Missoula, though I suppose it could have been. It wasn’t, really, anywhere. I had my arms clutched around the man driving the motorcycle, my cheek pressed against his back. I didn’t know where we were going, who it was.
I knew it was a cop, from the hat he was wearing and the blue uniform. I could feel his muscles, tense and strong, under his clothing as my hands roamed across his torso. I could have sworn, once I woke up, that I could really feel the way the bike hummed and shook underneath me. As we drove on, the suburbs dropped away, turning to wide, flat desert.
