The Boys of Summer

by Richard Cox

  David imagined what she would say if he told her about his own gift, how he’d built his fortune making investments with barely more than intuition. The thought made him smile.

  “Laugh all you want,” Meredith said. She pointed at his father’s house. “But you haven’t been here for almost twenty years. I hope you’re ready for what you find.”

  “I’m ready,” he said, thinking about the Johnnie Walker he would soon be drinking. “Let’s go in there and get this over with.”

  Alicia and Jonathan had parked on the street and soon joined them on the driveway. David led the four of them to the back porch, where he expected to find the key, and sure enough it was perched on the stone outcropping above the door. He had never understood why his dad would leave himself so vulnerable. As thorough and protective as the old man had been, why didn’t he realize any common thief would think to look there?

  They walked through a small entryway and into the living room. The house was dark and the thermostat was turned way down.

  “Jesus,” Meredith said. “It’s like an ice box in here. No wonder you run the air so cold at your house.”

  David grunted. He hated when she tried to relate him to his father.

  His hands felt along the wall and found a light switch. He flipped it on and was not surprised to see the living room had been completely remodeled. The shag carpet had been replaced with hardwood, and the old faux wood paneling had disappeared. Mounted on the wall nearest him was a large flat-screen TV. The old fabric sofa and chair were gone and expensive-looking leather furniture had taken their place.

  “Your dad had decent taste,” Meredith said. “Being here alone.”

  In a recessed area of the room stood a wet bar. David stepped behind it and set up four glasses.

  “Would anyone like a drink?”

  They all nodded. David opened the cabinet underneath and reached inside for a bottle.

  “So what does Gholson need?” Jonathan asked. “What does he want you to find?”

  “Dental records,” David answered. He found one liquor bottle and retrieved it from the cabinet. “He needs to know which dentist my dad used so they can request records to make a formal identification of his body.”

  “Oh, God,” Alicia said. “I’m so sorry, David. He was burned that badly?”

  “Apparently so. I haven’t seen the body yet.”

  “I can’t imagine what the hell Bobby was thinking,” Jonathan said. “That’s just awful.”

  The bottle of scotch wasn’t Johnnie Walker. It was Cutty Sark. An old man’s drink. He poured two fingers for each of them and three for himself.

  “His office is this way,” David said, and led them in that direction. “I assume he kept personal files in there. I need to look for checking account records, invoices, something like that, and then I need to find his will. Figure out if he wanted to be buried or cremated.”

  When he reached the office and switched on the light, the first thing David noticed were golf clubs standing in one corner. He’d never known his dad to play golf. Sitting beside the clubs were a couple of computer cases. Their shells were cream-colored and he recognized them even before he could make out the brand logo. They were old Packard Bell machines.

  “David,” Meredith said. She was looking at something else, but David was still trying to understand how his father had known about his involvement with Packard Bell. “Oh, my God, look at this.”

  He glanced up and saw Meredith looking at a corkboard mounted above his father’s working computer, a recent-model iMac. Pinned to the board were newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and even printed versions of Internet stories. David recognized some of them immediately, like his short profile in Business Insider or last year’s two-page spread in C Magazine. Others were more difficult to identify, but each one of them was obviously an article written about him or that mentioned him.

  The board was almost completely covered. There had to be twelve, maybe fifteen clippings.

  He could feel Meredith looking at him, and in that moment David hated her. He wished she had never come to Texas. He wished none of them were here. If he were alone, maybe he could make more sense of all this. Packard Bell machines, the Apple computer, these clippings—his father had obviously been following his career for years. Since basically the beginning. And David had run off to California because the old man could not stand the sight of him. To prove his father was an idiot, he had built his fortune without lifting a finger. Every time he fucked some model or wannabe actress, every time he went up into the stratosphere in his luxury jet, he spat in the face of his father’s Middle American values and hypocritical morality. The old man expected honesty from elected officials, humility from famous athletes and celebrities, he basically expected the world he saw on TV to live with honor . . . even though Fred Clark himself was far from an honorable man. Had it been honorable for him to fuck some girl at the restaurant? Had it been fair to ask David to hide the truth from his mom? Why the hell had his dad followed his career like this when he’d been the one to chase David away in the first place?

  He had approached the board and realized Meredith was standing behind him now. She put her hand on his shoulder.

  “David, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “But this, I mean, he loved you. He missed you. He—”

  “Hey,” he said, and turned to face all three of them. “I guess maybe I have some things to do here. Beyond the dental records and whatever. Maybe we ought to get together again tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” Alicia said.

  “Yeah,” said Jonathan. “Sure, man.”

  “I called my friend and he’s looking into Todd. He’s going to call me in the morning with an update. If he’s found something, we’ll pursue it. Sound good?”

  “Looking forward to it,” Jonathan said. “I want to find that fucker and ask him a few questions.”

  “We’ll find him,” David promised. “And I’m sorry I asked you guys to come all the way out here. But we have a busy day tomorrow and I suppose it’s better if we get some rest tonight. Jonathan, I’ll call the hotel and get you a room. We’re staying at the Radisson by the river.”

  When they were gone, David poured himself another three fingers. Meredith followed him around like a child.

  “Honey, don’t you want to talk about this?”

  “What is there to talk about?”

  “I don’t know, maybe the longstanding grudge you carried for a father who missed you terribly?”

  “If he missed me so bad, he could have called. I’ve had the same cell number since I was twenty.”

  “And maybe he wished you would call him.”

  “To talk about what? The weather? Politics? My dad was a smart man who could not see beyond what FOX News told him to believe. He held everyone but himself in contempt. Everyone but him was living in the wrong way, either a hedonistic lifestyle or sucking off the government teat. My whole life is set up as a correction against my dad’s, so I don’t give a shit what he put on some board in his office. If he spent five minutes in Carmel, if he ever saw my house, he wouldn’t have waited on Bobby to come after him. He would have just killed himself and been done with it.”

  “No,” Meredith said. “He wouldn’t.”

  “You. Do not know shit. About my father.”

  “Yes, I do, David. And the reason I know him is because you just described yourself. Maybe you have different economic views, but you judge people and situations in exactly the same way. And all this hard work you never did, so you could get back at him, it’s all bullshit. You work your ass off. You’re on the phone all the time. You can’t even put the goddamned thing away at the golf course, not even when we’re at someplace gorgeous like Cypress or Pebble. Most people would kill to play those courses even once and you don’t take the time to enjoy them. Just because you don’t scrub barbecue pits anymore or sit in a cubicle eight hours a day, that doesn’t mean you don’t work. You’re d
riven to succeed by the same ambition he was, and he obviously loved you for it. He saw what he helped you become and lived vicariously through your success. You’re a millionaire many times over because of your dad. You should remember him for that instead of your stupid grudge.”

  David had never struck a woman but he was tempted to now. Meredith had no idea what she was talking about. He was rich because of a strange ability that allowed him to see what no one else could. Well, at least one other person could, and David was determined to find out what Todd knew and why. His father and his stupid mural could go to hell.

  He poured himself more scotch and glared at Meredith.

  “Tomorrow we’re going to find Todd Willis. You’re welcome to be a part of it. But I don’t want to hear any more of this shit about my dad. Don’t tell me I’m like him. I’m nothing like him. Now, let’s go back to the hotel and get some sleep. I don’t want to spend another minute tonight in this house.”

  Meredith looked at him a long time before answering.

  “Fine,” she finally said. “But I’m driving.”

  57

  Jonathan sat in the passenger seat of Alicia’s car, looking out the window at the dark and smoldering ruins of his house. He was thinking about how David hadn’t spoken to his father in years. Only now it turned out Fred Clark must have viewed their relationship differently than David, had maybe even wished for a reconciliation. How else to interpret that board of article clippings except as a father who deeply missed his son?

  “You can stay over if you want,” Alicia said. “I know it’s not the most comfortable thing, but I’d be happy to make you a pallet. If you don’t want to be alone in the hotel room.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I need some time to think.”

  “I’m sorry about your house, Jonathan.”

  “Thanks. It’s so overwhelming right now it doesn’t even seem real. It’s like my whole life is gone.”

  “I know. And later you’ll be angry that it was intentional. Whoever is doing this probably thinks he’s making some kind of point or getting revenge or whatever, but these are our lives he’s toying with. Maybe it’s all just stuff, but what about the pictures and letters and other sentimental things? I can’t replace those. It might not change anything, but I want the police to find this guy. I want there to be consequences.”

  “I lost most of my writing,” Jonathan said. It should have hurt worse to say this, but in a way it felt cathartic to unburden himself from so much failure. “Years of work.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

  “It is terrible. But a part of me thinks, what was I going to do with it all? Nobody wanted those stories, so maybe I’m better off not having them to fret over.”

  “When you sell your first novel, though, you might have enjoyed looking back at the steps that got you there.”

  “Maybe so,” Jonathan said. “And I want the guy to pay. But imagine how David must be feeling now that he knows his father missed him.”

  “I know. If one of them had just picked up the phone, their whole relationship might have been different. And now they’ll never get the chance.”

  Maybe, as he considered David and his father, Jonathan was really thinking about his mother, how their own relationship had fallen apart over the years. He thought again of the scraps of paper he had found, the memory of Kenny and his mother tearing his precious ideas to shreds. Was the universe telling him it was time to go see her?

  Even from inside the car he could smell what was left of his house, the damp and smoky hulk of it, and in that moment he was struck by how much had happened over the past couple of days, how much their lives had already changed. And he was certain there was plenty of story left.

  Impulsively, Jonathan leaned over and kissed Alicia. She seemed surprised at first but then put her hand around his neck and held him there.

  “I’ve got another chance,” he whispered to her. “And this time I’m going to make the most of it.”

  58

  All night David had trouble sleeping. No matter how far down he turned the thermostat, it wasn’t cold enough to stop him from sweating into the sheets. He felt like he was dreaming even when he was awake, and several times he confused the hum of the air conditioning unit with the sound of a jet engine. As if he were on his plane, flying back to California, instead of failing to sleep in this squalid hotel room that was somehow the most expensive property in town.

  And if he listened closely, David could hear footsteps. Like someone was following him, watching him. But that was no surprise because someone had always been watching him. He’d first come to realize this that day in the forest, when hail had rained down like mortar shells, and though he tended to ignore the reality of it during the day, he could not deny the footsteps he so often heard at night. Whoever was watching him was crafty about it, lurking in shadows and around corners and at the far edge of his peripheral vision, resisting direct observation. But in the haze of half sleep, David understood his entire adult life had been fiction, a way to avoid the truth: Something was fundamentally wrong with the world.

  In the bleakest hours of a sleepless night, David was often overcome with the terrible sensation that his life was being consumed as entertainment. Perhaps, at this very moment, someone was sitting in a chair or on a sofa or on an airplane reading about him in a novel.

  Hey, reader! he wanted to scream. I’m alive! In this novel world I experience doubts and heartache and euphoria, the same as you. And like every American I strive so hard to be happy!

  But to a person reading about him, David realized, he was nothing more than a reflection, a glimmer of reality. Time moved forward only when someone turned the pages of his life, and when the book was closed he ceased to exist.

  For a moment he swam awake. The alarm clock read 3:14. His head hurt, his mouth was dry like sandpaper, and he was lying on an unfamiliar bed, twisted among alien sheets. The air conditioner droned nasally.

  David had been dreaming about something awful but couldn’t remember what it was. He did recall the previous night, however: the fire at Jonathan’s house, the recordings of Todd’s music, his father’s strange and infuriating fixation on his career. He also realized they had not spoken much about Joe Henreid. David hadn’t given Meredith the full story and it seemed like Jonathan hadn’t revealed much to Alicia, either. And for good reason. Even though the kid appeared to have made it out of the burning house alive—his gasoline-smelling clothes had been found later, unburned—he had nonetheless disappeared. And since Joe was the only one besides the five of them who knew how the fire had started, no rational, informed adult could believe the kid had gone away on his own. Clearly, someone had taken it upon himself to silence the little brat. And what did silence mean in this case other than death?

  He snapped awake again. His cell phone was ringing. Now it was 6:17.

  “David Clark,” he said into the phone.

  “I found the mother in Corpus Christi,” said his friend, Erik. “The parents are divorced. I’m still working on the father.”

  “Great,” David said. He climbed out of bed and walked to the desk. Grabbed his organizer and a pen. “That’s fantastic. Let me have the address.”

  When he was off the phone, he noticed Meredith was awake. She looked confused.

  “Good morning, Mr. Busy.”

  “Hi there, gorgeous. That was Erik. He found Todd’s mother in Corpus Christi.”

  “Where is that?”

  “South of Houston on the coast. Beach town.”

  “So what’s next? Do you have a phone number?”

  “Oh, we’re not calling her. We’re going to see her. Today.”

  “David, why? You’ve barely spent any time at your dad’s place. There’s a lot of work to do.”

  “That can wait.”

  “But the detective specifically asked you—”

  “It’s Saturday, Meredith. What’s he going to do with the name of a dentist on a Saturday?”

/>   “What will it get you to talk to Todd’s mother on a Saturday? What’s she going to tell you? How her little boy was born with a caul over his face and could sometimes tell you what song was coming next on the radio?”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “I think you’re not acting like yourself, David. I tried telling you this last night and you wouldn’t listen. How are you feeling, by the way, after all that scotch?”

  “I feel fine,” he lied.

  “You seriously must be the least happy billionaire in the world. You have everything a person could ever want and it’s still not enough. Why can’t you sit back and enjoy the things you’ve earned? Why does it always have to be more, more, more?”

  “People who want to make it in this world would never think to ask that question.”

  “Make it? You already made it! You will never spend all the money you have, and you don’t even have children to give it to when you’re gone.”

  David couldn’t tell her the real problem, which was that he hadn’t won anything at all, not really. Not on merit. Not with this intuition he didn’t properly understand.

  “I’m getting in the shower. I want to be in the air as soon as we can manage. I’ll call Jonathan and the four of us will take a little trip. It can’t be more than a thirty-minute flight.”

  He walked past Meredith toward the bathroom. She didn’t answer.

  59

  When he stepped out of the bathroom again, Meredith was sitting on the bed, watching television. David smiled broadly, because that’s the kind of guy he was. A smiler. Meredith was probably angry with him for walking out on their conversation, so he would accept responsibility and then ask her to get ready for the flight to Corpus Christi. She wouldn’t like it, but she would do it.