by A J Grayson
I thought about this for a moment. At first it seemed a sensible enough thing to say; though I’ve always hated this saying, ‘It is what it is’ being a too-frequently-employed nonsense phrase I’ve always considered a bit defeatist. And general criticisms aside, in this case it was a nothing thing to say. An answer that revealed nothing, that didn’t expose a single thing about his family life. Though maybe that fact was in itself revealing.
‘Any brothers or sisters?’ I probed.
He shook his head, ‘Just me. That was always enough for the parents.’
I nodded. I also was an only child, part of an elite club that included a huge swath of the world’s population, but which always made those of us within it feel a little special. That’s how we were supposed to feel: unique. It’s what we’d been told in school, and certainly what we were told by our parents. ‘You don’t need a little sister or brother, Dylan. You’re enough for us just as you are, all by yourself.’
‘I’m with you on that one,’ I decided to add, allowing a little levity into my voice. It was a kind of puerile comment, far more new-generation in style than I normally spoke, but I felt like this might resonate well with the not-yet-twenty lad beside me. ‘What about your parents?’ I finally asked.
This time I could feel, more than see, the shift in Joseph’s form, as if his whole body tightened at the question. But again he didn’t say anything, not immediately.
‘Are they still alive?’ I followed up. A reasonable enough question. Many people’s parents are, many people’s aren’t.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not the last time I saw them.’
A puzzling answer, if ever I’d heard one, to what was otherwise a fairly ordinary question.
My parents are still alive, though I haven’t seen them in a very long time – can’t actually think of the last time I went to visit them. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I answered to Joseph. ‘That must be difficult for you.’
‘Everybody dies,’ he replied, matter-of-factly, with a simple shrug of his shoulders.
I couldn’t argue with his logic, though it was clear there was pain behind his otherwise unemotional words.
My own parents brought good memories into my mind, not bad. Loving people, both of them, who care for each other deeply. That’s the way they always look in my memory. They are alive but very old and very far away, and we’re not really in frequent touch. No fallings-out, just the way the modern world works. Every time I think of them, every time they come into the forefront of my memory, it’s like a portrait out of a picture frame in a shopping centre. An ideal husband and wife gazing longingly into each other’s eyes. Even there, sitting in the car fleeing the scene of a murder, that image brought me tremendous comfort. There was real love, real joy, real support.
I glanced in Joseph’s direction. He was gazing vacantly out the side window. ‘Do you want to talk about them?’ I asked, wondering if his silence was an invitation for friendly dialogue.
‘There isn’t anything to say,’ he answered, and his voice seemed a full pitch lower than when he’d spoken a moment ago. ‘Nothing to say that changes anything.’
‘What would you change?’ I asked, innocent and curious. He swivelled his head towards me, and he probed me with a gaze unlike any other he’d had since I’d met him. Those fierce eyes were not fierce in this instant, but questioning. Intently. Almost uncomprehending. You should know, they seemed to telegraph across that little space. You should know full well. But I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.
Once the gaze had been broken he turned back to looking out the window. ‘My memories aren’t pleasant,’ he said. ‘Family isn’t a subject I’ve ever liked to talk about.’
My insides clenched a little. I felt compassion. I felt sorry for this young man.
‘But at least it’s done with,’ he continued.
I let some silence pass between us. His parents were no longer alive, but that seemed to be a good thing for Joseph. Whatever his relationship with them had been, it clearly hadn’t been comfortable; and while death is never an easy thing – and I’m sure that, however they died, the result is that he misses them – nevertheless it seems that in death they had left him with more peace than when they’d been alive. And maybe that was good enough. Maybe that’s the way that consolation comes through grief.
So I turned my attention back to the dashed yellow lines marking the centre of the highway as I continued to drive, and for a while no more words were necessary, and no more words were spoken.
60
Thursday
We’ve pulled in at a roadside service station to fill up the car and grab a few supplies for the next leg of our journey. According to the atlas Joseph extracted from my glove compartment, we’ve probably got another fifteen to twenty hours ahead, and neither of us is able to make that without a little food. Thus far it’s been McDonald’s and Burger Kings all the way, and without actually conferring on the matter we both agreed silently that the limit of fast food had been reached. We needed to stop for something different.
So, having cleaned ourselves up as much as we could – there’s very little blood left on our bodies now – we’ve exited the car, filled up the tank, and have both gone into the service station to buy some snacks and proper food. Not that filler-station food is known for being that much more nutritious or delicious than what one gets from a fast-food window, but it’s different, and at this stage in our monotony different is as welcome as good.
Joseph goes immediately for the pre-wrapped sandwiches and an enormous case of canned beer – the same provisions, I immediately recognize, with which he’d stuffed his cooler back in the forest in California. I suppose once we know what we like, we know what we like.
A more practical streak catches alight in me, however, and though I’m also anxious to find something to fill my stomach, I make my way first towards the toiletries section of the shop where I grab a cheap toothbrush and a travel-size tube of toothpaste. I feel dirty inside and out, and the thought of clean teeth and fresh breath is almost as inviting as a full stomach.
Then it’s to the coffee counter, again before the food, priorities being priorities. I remember I haven’t had a good cup of coffee since before I met Joseph, since before the tragedy at the farmhouse. But as I arrive at the counter, marked by a bold display saying ‘Coffee!!!’ with three exclamation points – as if this were a point of particular elation for any who would walk into the store – I realize in a heartbeat that I’m not to have any good coffee here either. That which is served comes in one of two forms: from a push-button machine on the counter, which dispenses something that it persists in calling ‘Cappuccino’ but which is simply a foamed concoction of powdered milk heated to just above lukewarm while powdered coffee is sprinkled on top with a little hot water. Or, as a second option, coffee that comes out of a round glass carafe, the kind found in old restaurants and diners, which looks like it was brewed in the early hours of the night and has sat, half-empty on the burner, for all the hours that have passed since. It’s a hard decision between two obviously putrid choices, and I weigh it carefully. Ultimately I chose the tar-like substance in the glass carafe. It’s undoubtedly five times the strength coffee should be and will bring winces and unpleasant thoughts when I drink it, but at least it’s real coffee and not a powdered chemical substitute. I fill one of the large paper cups, snap on a plastic lid, and head for the food aisle.
Joseph is still filling up a basket with snacks. ‘You ever feel like eating something besides a bologna and American cheese sandwich?’ I ask him, my voice half in jest, as I see what he’s gathered together. Even in the world of service-station sandwiches there’s more variety on offer than just that. But his basket has five of them, arrayed in a nice little row.
‘Hey, I likes what I likes,’ he says, a fake Boston accent suddenly emerging from his nineteen-year-old lips, emulating some film he must once have seen.
‘Well, as long as you likes to let me pay for that case of b
eer you’ve got under your arm,’ I joke back, trying – and failing – to mimic his accent, ‘then they might actually let us out of here in one piece.’
He grins at me. Being underage hadn’t been a problem when his aim was to steal whatever he took from little shops, but since we are here fully intending to pay, it is going to have to be me who brings the alcohol up to the counter. I only hope that the uninterested man at the till hasn’t already seen it under Joseph’s arm.
I glance over the food on offer. The choice is remarkably slim. I take two sandwiches of my own, one a chicken tikka masala and one a BLT, together with a banana and two apples that for some reason are wrapped in cling film and look to be almost as old in fruit terms as the coffee is in coffee terms. But still edible, and probably mostly clean.
When finally our baskets have been filled, when we’ve both held them for each other while we daringly brave the men’s toilets and come out mostly unscathed from the filthy experience, we bring them up to the front of the shop and lay them next to the till.
‘I’ll put all these on my card,’ I say to the man who’s already examining the pricing labels on each item and typing them manually into the register. No laser scanners in this dive.
But there is a television, mounted up on the shelf behind the counter, presumably to occupy this man’s attention for the long expanses of time between the arrival of visitors such as ourselves. It looks older than the man, but it functions and it’s powered on. And on that little television, in black-and-white forms scattered beneath the static haze of a foil-enhanced aerial, is a news report.
I’ve never been afraid of the news. I rarely watch it. But in this instant the report sends my heart into terrorized palpitations.
We’re in Texas now, hundreds of miles away from the scene, but right before my eyes, even subtitled to remove any doubt, is a place I recognize. Redding: California. In the north of the state. Only a stone’s throw from the Oregon border.
The volume isn’t loud, but neither is there much noise in the shop apart from the teller’s fingers pressing into his buttons, a soft beep emerging with each one. I can just make out the newsreader’s voice as the report is broadcast live across the air.
‘One of the most grisly crimes seen in this part of the state in decades,’ she says, somewhere in the middle of her prepared text. ‘A double homicide in a small town inexperienced in dealing with the discovery that two of its citizens have been brutally murdered.’
Brutally murdered. The words drive through me like spikes. I can feel my skin go cold – all of it, over every inch of my body – and then I can’t seem to feel it at all.
‘Local authorities in this largely peaceful neighbourhood have never before faced a crime scene bearing witness to such violence,’ the report continues. ‘Full details on the nature of the crime have not yet been shared with us, but a source from the inspecting unit, who wishes to remain anonymous at this stage, indicated to us that the bodies of the two victims had been, to quote, “brutalized”. While the word torture wasn’t used in his remarks to us, this reporter proposed it in a question back to him, and it wasn’t denied.’
Now it isn’t just my numb skin that’s reacting. My ears start to ring with a tinny, tingling noise that invades my perception. It surrounds the newsreader’s words, fading out the other sounds around me. I can no longer hear the beeps from the till, though the man behind it is still pounding away at his keys. I can hear only this ringing, my own raspy breath, and the voice coming from the television.
The display on the screen suddenly shifts to a situational shot, taken from the top of a hill, and I recognize the spot immediately. It’s the same spot where I’d stood, where the boy had led me, when I first glanced down its far side and saw the farmhouse. And there it is, just as I remember it, now in black and white and grainy, but unquestionably the same house. I can almost see, between the spot where the camera is positioned and the front porch of that house, two trails in the high grass leading out from the forest, carved by Joseph and myself as we charged up to the door which even now is visibly shattered, its remnants hanging in place from a single hinge.
‘There are no suspects as yet in what is a crime with no known motivation,’ the newsreader continues, ‘though an investigation is underway involving both local and state forces, and which may be expanded as more materials come to light.’
These words both comfort and panic me. The comfort comes from the fact that no suspects are yet charted. They don’t know my name. They don’t know Joseph’s. They haven’t pieced together our presence there. And maybe they never will.
And yet panic. Terror. The investigation is only beginning and it’s already spread beyond the confines of little Redding to the whole of California. State forces. This means it involves officials in my own city, in San Francisco, and I wonder for the briefest of instants whether this means I’ll never be able to return there. That thought is almost impossibly frightening.
The investigation is going to expand. Expand. With that, my stomach forms into a rock. How far will they go to look for the as-yet unknown assailants? The assailants standing here in this Texas shop buying sandwiches and beer and a travel-size tube of toothpaste, joking in fake accents and running away from a crime that has shocked an entire nation.
61
Thursday
‘Joseph, did you see the news report?’ I ask the question the moment we’re back on the highway. For some reason I didn’t feel inclined to ask it when we first sat back into the car, fired up the engine and made our way off from the station. I wanted there to be some distance, however minimal and ultimately meaningless, between the service station and us before I raised it. But when I do, the question drops out of me with a powerful fervency.
‘On the little television in there,’ I continued, ‘just where we were paying. Did you see? Did you hear?’
Joseph is driving now and he keeps his eyes on the road, both hands firmly on the wheel.
‘Pass me one of them beers,’ he says, avoiding my question, sounding very countryish. I’m infuriated.
‘Listen to me!’ I say to him, reaching out and rapping my knuckles on the dash in front of the wheel, trying to gain his proper attention. ‘Listen to what I’ve just said! There was a news report, there on the television in the shop. Did you see it or did you not?’
I demand that he answer me. I will not have it that he simply ignores such a question about such a thing.
‘Yeah, I saw it,’ he finally says, annoyed, ‘now give me a damned beer. I’m not going to ask again.’ He removes his right hand from the wheel and holds it out towards to me, waiting. And I, not knowing quite what else to do, tear through the cardboard top of the case and hand him one of the semi-cold cans.
‘They know about everything,’ I say as I pass him the beer. He cracks open the top with a flick of his finger and downs a full swallow of his drink, still saying nothing. ‘They know about what we’ve done.’ I stress each word as I emphasize the point. Joseph is failing to appreciate the gravity of what this means.
‘They don’t know shit,’ he eventually says back. He takes another swig of his beer. ‘Nothing that matters.’ Finally he glances over and looks straight into my eyes for an intense second. ‘Nothing that connects to you or to me.’ Then his eyes are back on the road, as if this answers every question and solves every problem. But I know that it doesn’t. My heart is racing. I’m consumed with tension and fear.
‘Joseph, it said that they’re initiating a manhunt.’
‘Of course they are!’ he lets out. There’s an almost jesting tone to his voice. ‘But we knew that! You said they would, back when we were in the forest. That’s why we left my house.’
I’m briefly startled by hearing him refer to the pile of old rubbish in the woods as his ‘house’, but it’s not the issue of the moment.
‘I knew they would start looking, Joseph, but didn’t you hear: they’re coordinating. It’s not only the local police. They’re not just look
ing in the forest. They’ve got the state patrol on board, and it said they’re bringing in others!’
Joseph shrugs. He reaches a hand into one of the paper sacks into which our goods were packaged by the man at the till and extracts a sandwich. Examining it to make sure it’s one of his bologna monstrosities, he works a finger through the cellophane, his beer now tucked between his knees, and pries it open. A moment later his mouth is filled with soggy white bread, bologna, and something that in only the vaguest of ways resembles cheese.
‘I’m not sure you fully understand what this means, Joseph.’ I feel I might need to explain the details of an actual manhunt to this younger man. ‘The others they’re going to bring in are police from other states, maybe even interstate organizations. Joseph, they’re going to be looking for us everywhere!’
He chews on his sandwich. The scent of bologna, something I don’t find pleasant under normal circumstances, is particularly revolting in this instant.
‘Let them look,’ he says, ‘just what do you expect them to find, Dylan?’ There’s exasperation in his voice. He’s as annoyed with my spiked energy as I am with his lack of it. ‘We didn’t touch anything in the house when we were there. We brought the weapons in and we took them out. The people are dead and the job is done. They’ll look and they’ll look, but what are they going to find? There’s millions of people in this country – fifty states full of them. The fact they’re looking doesn’t mean they’re going to find shit!’
He allows his eyes to turn towards me again. This time they’re filled with surety. This is all obvious to him. A complete picture. We’re safe. Events are certain. There’s nothing to worry about. As if to emphasize the point he reaches his left hand down and grabs his beer, takes another long swig, then turns his attention back to the road with a grunt of finality. ‘Have a drink, old man, and relax.’
