by A J Grayson
I have no appetite now, nor do I want anything to drink. Certainly not a Coors Light. And I’m not convinced, no matter what Joseph says. If he was living in the woods, so close to that house, they will, as I knew from the beginning that they would, find his little shanty. And that means they’ll likely be able to narrow down who it was that lived there. At least enough to get a general picture, a description of a man: so tall, so high, so young. The kind of man that shopkeepers have seen swiping sandwiches and beer when he thought they weren’t looking. Maybe they won’t know his name, his identity, but that kind of description attached to a nationwide manhunt … there may be hundreds of millions of people out there, but there aren’t that many who look like that.
I recognize the danger this means. Joseph doesn’t. He’s chewing on his damned bologna sandwich and I just want to drive a fist into his face. But I know from our previous discussions that pushing Joseph too far, too fast, only forces him to a breaking point; and the last thing that I need is a yelling match, or some sort of silent treatment for the next 400 miles in the car. So I force my breathing into a steadier rhythm. I watch the dashed yellow lines disappear beneath us as we drive. I let thirty seconds pass. A minute. I even grab a beer – not because I want it, but because I think the casual, ordinary action might open up Joseph to some sort of reasonable discussion, friend to friend, peer to peer. Coors Light drinker to Coors Light drinker.
I snap open the top, take a swill. It’s every bit as repugnant as I anticipate. I let another thirty seconds pass. I turn my body so that it’s angled towards him. It’s clear I want to speak. I draw in my breath, but before the words can come out Joseph lifts up both hands from the wheel and taps them down again with a kind of change of pace about him.
‘You know what?’ he says to me, his voice suddenly interested and engaging in a way that I hadn’t heard it since I first met him in the forest. ‘You’ve never told me what you like to do.’
This comment throws me totally off guard. ‘What I like to do?’ I’m not even sure how to formulate a question in response, though everything in me in this instant is a question.
‘Yeah. You’ve told me about where you live. About where you work. You’ve told me about streetcars and buildings – but you’ve never told me what you like to do.’
Again I’m baffled at this young man’s ability to avoid the points that need to be discussed in favour of things that have no bearing on our dire circumstances.
‘Joseph, it doesn’t matter what I like to do. Right now we need to talk about—’
‘On an ordinary day,’ his words pierce through mine, ‘what do you do with yourself? I mean when you’re not at work, when you’re not selling your drugs or your “supplements” or whatever it is you call them. Are you a fisherman? Do you play video games? Do you hang out in bars?’
I sink back into my seat and force myself to take another, rather longer, drink of the beer. Joseph is not going to talk about the news report. He’s making that as obvious as he can in his own way. But he is talking, and that in and of itself is something unusual. I’m loath to give it up simply because it’s not about the topic that I feel is most pressing.
‘No, Joseph,’ I sigh, ‘I don’t hang out in bars. I’ve never been able to find them all that interesting.’ In fact the first bar I can remember being in in years was the one I’d sat in in Redding, having a Jack Daniel’s the night before I’d started my search around the outskirts of town.
‘So what, is it video games or book clubs – what do city men do?’ He turns to me. He’s making light, trying to be friendly. I resign myself to whatever this conversation is to become. Reaching into the paper bag I extract one of the sandwiches, also examining it closely, though in my case to ensure that it is not one of made of bologna.
‘I like to take walks,’ I finally answer.
‘Walks? In the city?’ Joseph looks perplexed. ‘What’s there to walk to in the city? You see one street, you’ve seen every street.’
This causes a slight smile. There is a naiveté to Joseph, though there is a truth to his words as well. One city street is much like every other street, though of all the cities I’ve ever known San Francisco is the one with the most varied beauty between one street and the next. Victorian homes here, skyscrapers there, pyramid buildings, Chinatowns, old military garrisons. Yet Joseph has a point, and he’s not wrong. Not in my case.
‘Not on the city streets,’ I say. I decide against the sandwich before I start unwrapping it. The conversation has become more interesting. ‘I like to walk in the park.’
‘Ah, you’ve got a park in San Francisco! That’s nice.’ Joseph seems to think the idea quaint, and I can understand that, coming from someone who’s grown up in the actual outdoors.
‘It is a big one, your park?’ he asks.
I smile despite myself. Even the mention of the park, and even in these circumstances, brings me joy. ‘Huge,’ I answer. ‘I’ve been walking around it for a couple years now and there are still more paths I haven’t put my feet on than those I have.’
‘Doesn’t sound bad,’ Joseph answers, his mouth full again.
‘It’s actually quite wonderful. And there’s its best spot, which I especially like to visit.’
I would have brought this up with Joseph before, in one of our many non-conversations of the drive, but I was certain he never would have listened, never would have cared. That it would have been ten seconds of me describing my haven to a wall of complete disinterest and silence. But in this moment Joseph seems not only interested but captivated, and though I’m nearly certain that this interest stems from his desire not to talk about the news report – which must frighten him just as much as it frightens me – nevertheless he’s listening. And I’m keen to talk.
‘The one spot I really love,’ I continue, ‘it’s a little pond beneath these beautiful Asian trees. And there’s a little bench by the pond and I go and sit there just about every day at lunch.’
‘Why at lunch?’
‘My only free time in the day,’ I answer. ‘Forty-five minutes off at lunchtime. I can make it there and back with enough time to have a solid half-hour at the pond. I just sit there and enjoy the scenery. Refresh myself before I head back out into the world.’
Joseph ponders these words as if they’re comprehensible to him, but still slightly strange. ‘With all that park out there, don’t you get bored sitting all the time at that same pond?’
I chuckle to myself. I’m not sure how to answer the younger man. I remember youth. Youth is filled with the need to constantly see new things, mark new ground, conquer new territory. And to youth it’s impossible to describe the stability that one starts to crave with age. Yes, there is still a thrill that comes from climbing up a new mountaintop every once in a while, but what solace and joy there is in finding a place that is always yours, always beautiful. That, no matter what may be happening around you, provides you with comfort. The heavens may break open, the world may bomb itself into oblivion, terrorists may rip apart the fabric of society itself; but in that park, by that pond, on that bench, all is always well.
‘No,’ I finally say to him, ‘I don’t get bored, but there’s no reason for us to chat so much about this, Joseph.’ I find it odd that I am the one wrapping up this conversation. ‘We don’t have to dwell on these things.’
‘Hey, that’s up to you, man,’ he answers. He’s already made it through his first beer and tosses the empty tin nonchalantly over his shoulder into the back, then reaches over to grab another.
As he does so, I’m reminded of the main reason I go to my park. I’m reminded of the one thing that I always crave to see there. I’m reminded of the connection which that pond and that bench in that park have to this moment, in this car on this road. I’m reminded of the boy. I’m reminded of the wounds. I’m reminded of my desire to help – my trip, my journey. And I’m reminded of the terror to which my little pond ultimately drew me.
62
Thursday Nig
ht
There comes a point when truth can no longer be avoided. Joseph and I have been making the most of our journey, which the map indicates should, before too long, be coming to its end. We’re driving through the night now, and likely by lunchtime tomorrow we’ll have made our target: the Nashville that Joseph suggested from the forest in California. And all this way we’ve avoided talking about what we did there, though the newsreader on the television prompted it, and though my constant desire has been to raise it. We’ve relegated it to the shadows, to the clouds that sit over the top of us, to the silent spaces between our conversations.
But shadows eventually creep in on the light, and clouds that big can’t linger for too long in such a little space. As we settle into a long night and all conversation comes to a natural ebb, the quiet of the road lulls me into the kind of half-sleep where memories so often come. And this night, they come with a vengeance.
We stormed the house, Joseph and I, just like we’d planned. It was meant to be a righteous act and that’s where the righteousness lay, because even as we ran up to the porch we could hear the abuse inside getting louder. There were sounds of fists meeting flesh, of profanities and depredations. If there had been any doubt in my mind before, as we concocted our reckless plan of action in the woods, it was gone by the time we got to the door. I no longer had any reservations: it was good that we were there, that we were running with weapons into a scene where those who needed defending had no means of doing so on their own. It was good that Joseph had his shoulder forward and was slamming his body into the door, and that it splintered away beneath him with such ease.
It was good. And it felt good – genuinely, nobly good – to be doing it.
The house into which we’d thrust ourselves was a dump. A shack, really. It looked like it had been neglected for years, with only a few traces of family warmth left in its timbers. There were echoes of a child in some of the decorations – a few school photos, a framed crayon drawing, that sort of thing – but there was an evident, overwhelming aura of absence at the same time. It hit me the moment we burst in. The child wasn’t there any more. The parents were living in an empty nest, and they’d started to let it go to the birds.
That fact troubled me instantly. And it troubles me now. Because I’d gone there for the boy, and the boy wasn’t a memory. He wasn’t a thing of the past. He was suffering, and I’d seen him wounded and broken. But this house didn’t feel like the place that a boy lived.
The man we were after had been in a chair: a tattered, worn out Lay-Z-Boy that had seen its best days a decade ago. Or, if I am to be more precise, he was falling into the chair as we entered. Whatever fit he’d been in as we’d listened outside, it had resulted in the woman fleeing the room (I could only presume; she wasn’t in sight when we made our entrance), and he was slumping into his recliner, a bottle in hand.
Self-satisfied bastard.
The bottle fell out of his grasp as we stormed his little fort. The man was unshaven, grey, and looked older than I’d expected. A man with such a young boy should be – younger. At least I thought so. But I’m no master of ages, and I know that men in particular can father children well into their older years. In any case, I didn’t have long to consider it. Joseph and I were still in motion, and he was putting the whole of our plan into action.
He yelled at the man with a fierce anger. It was clear that the observation Joseph had made of this family from the hillside, of which he’d spoken with me so briefly before our charge, had affected him deeply. He had a powerful hatred towards this man, and at first it came out in a torrent of fierce words. I was surprised at the string of profanities this young man knew, and how they came out in an uninterrupted stream.
Then the man, utterly shocked to see us, rose from his chair. I’m not sure if he made a move towards Joseph or if it just appeared like he did, but Joseph reacted. The rifle swivelled on his shoulder strap and he slammed its butt into the man’s chest, flinging him against the wall.
As his body flew back into the timbers, the abuser’s eyes were wide discs: horrified. He wheezed from the blow, his body sliding down towards the floor, but he still managed a few desperate words.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Maybe that’s how violent, abusive men respond to attackers invading their space. Not with pleas of fear and cowardice, but with words that are almost an accusation. I was expecting terrorized shock.
But Joseph wasn’t interested in tones or temperaments or in answering questions. He advanced on the man, his words bubbling out between spittle from his lips.
‘I know what you’ve done, you bastard!’ In the small, wooden room his words were thunder. ‘I know what you’ve done your whole stinking, self-righteous life! The whole world knows, though you’ve convinced yourself you’ve done it all in secret!’
I’m still not sure how to assess the expression on the man’s face as he bore this accusation. He was surprised, of course. But, once again, it wasn’t the kind of surprise I’d anticipated. It’s a hard thing to qualify in words. I was expecting absolute shock and incomprehension. Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you doing this to me? That sort of thing. But it wasn’t that kind of surprise. In amidst his shock there was recognition, clear and concrete, and that fact caught me off balance.
‘Did you think you’d get away with this forever?’ Joseph shouted, taking another menacing step towards the man, whose back had slid fully down the wall and who was now perched against it, his legs splayed in front of him. ‘Did you think there wouldn’t be a price to pay?’
My world started to break apart with the man’s answer.
‘I never thought I’d see you back here,’ he said. ‘I thought you were gone for good.’
I still can’t precisely identify the mixed emotion of those words. Surprise was there. Anger, too. Fear. Disgust. But the contents of the words themselves, they’re what threw me. I simply couldn’t comprehend what the man was saying. Joseph had told me he’d watched the house, that he’d observed it from the woods. He’d obviously left something out. This man, the one he’d hurled to the floor, the one he and I both knew was violent and wretched and a wraith more than a man, was someone who had met Joseph before. Someone who knew him. And the two of them had a past.
‘Of course you didn’t think you’d see me again, you bastard,’ Joseph spat back at him. ‘You thought you’d got rid of me when I ran off. Probably never happier than when you saw my room empty and I didn’t show up at the supper table at seven o’clock on the spot.’
‘You got that one right, you little shit!’
His words shocked me again. There’s a strange shattering that can take place inside the human mind, when reality seems to break apart like a fracturing mirror, suddenly reflecting not the single image you expect but two or three or four angular variations on a theme. That’s what this unexpected dialogue did to my understanding of our circumstances. I’d thought I’d known what was going on, but there were new pictures being reflected back to me. I’d thought we were aiding the innocent by attacking a stranger, but the man wasn’t a stranger, not to Joseph. I’d thought we were here for justice, but the words were starting to make it sound like my newfound companion was here for something else.
The man’s answer turned Joseph’s cheeks red. He shouted back at him, ‘Did you think I was just going to forget what you did to us?’
The man didn’t respond with words. Instead he leaned forward, never breaking eye contact with Joseph, looming above him, and spat onto the floor between them. Defiance and disgust. They were the only realities to him.
‘No more than you deserved,’ he finally added.
The response was revolting, but Joseph didn’t seem to hear it.
‘What you did to her!’ he shouted back, his words overlapping the old man’s. ‘What you’re still doing to her! Did you think I was just going to let you go on like that!?’
The man’s eyes went red, and he stared up at Joseph with fierc
e defiance.
‘I don’t give a fuck what you think about the way I raised you, or how I treat her. I’m a free man in a free country, and how I choose to raise my family is my own—’
He stopped his well-rehearsed rant as Joseph swung the rifle barrel-forward and aimed it at his face. There was an instant of terror: the muscles at his shoulders tensed, his features went taut. But a second later his venom returned.
The mirror of my understanding broke apart again. ‘The way I raised you …’ The words didn’t make sense. ‘How I choose to raise my family …’ New splinters in the glass, and the image became more fragmented.
The man stared up defiantly at the rifle Joseph had aimed at his head.
‘Nice try, kid. You and I both know you’ve never had the balls.’
That’s all it took. They were, as older stories might go, the magic words. Joseph broke. He brought the gun’s barrel down a few inches and without a second’s hesitation fired. The round blasted into the old man’s right knee with a sickening crunch, and he howled in pain.
A second shot took his other knee. Joseph’s face was wild.
‘What the fuck are you doi—’
The man’s panicked cry didn’t make it through the third shot, which took out his left shoulder, slamming him into the wall again. His face was now utter disbelief.
I don’t know what it was that provoked me to fire. Joseph had clearly disabled the man, but there was still a flame in the abuser’s eyes, even in the midst of his disbelief and pain. Maybe that’s what it was. A flame that I knew he had used to abuse the boy, his wife – and God knows who else. A flame that needed to be put out, even if I didn’t fully understand the circumstances I was in.
I fired at his other shoulder. My aim was not as true as Joseph’s and I shot wide, blasting a hole through his forearm.
‘That’s right! That’s the way!’ Joseph shouted. I glanced at his face. He had a manic look on his features, a smile that didn’t belong there.
