The Man Who Told the World

by Hanna Dare

  “Are you Wade Folsom?”

  He crossed his arms and regarded Conor with amusement. “Don’t tell me you’re about to serve me with papers.” He eyed the manila envelope in Conor’s hands. “Couldn’t you get a better summer job, like mowing lawns or some shit?”

  “In this town?” Conor shook his head. “No, I’m actually looking for your brother. Just to talk. I’m Conor Gillis and I’m a friend of Derek’s.”

  The amusement slipped off Wade’s face at the mention of Derek. “You don’t look like the sort who’d be friends with him.”

  Conor shrugged.

  Wade turned his head to spit on the ground. “Don’t see what good talking to Steve will do. I’ve talked to him and Barb’s been calling the house every day, yapping my ear off. Maggie, too. Hasn’t changed his mind.”

  “I’m not sure what good it’ll do either, but I’d like to try.”

  Wade said nothing, just stood there. Conor waited, it seemed like a long time.

  Finally, Wade turned away. “I got work to do.”

  “Just point me in the right direction.”

  Wade picked up some tools and bent over the engine of the car he’d been working on. He didn’t speak and Conor waited some more.

  “Try ’round back,” Wade said, not raising his head.

  “Thank you.”

  “Doubt you’ll be thanking me on the way out.”

  Conor found the man who must be Steven Folsom sitting at a picnic table in the back yard. It wasn’t so much a yard as the only space between the farmhouse and the forest that the trees and brush hadn’t claimed. Even if he’d seen this man on a random street, Conor would have recognized him right away as Derek’s father. He had thick, dark hair, shot through with gray and curling. His body was thin and stooped, but even the way he sat seemed somehow achingly familiar. His face, when he turned at Conor’s approach, was worn, but the eyes and the set of his jaw were all Derek. But it was a Derek at the end of a long and terrible journey. This man didn’t seem fearsome or monstrous. He seemed defeated.

  “Hi,” Conor said, and immediately regretted because it sounded silly. “I’m Conor and I know your son. I know Maggie and Mrs. Folsom, too. Not as well as Derek, but I guess I’m sort of here on their behalf. As a friend of the family.”

  The ice blue eyes regarded him without any expression. Conor took a step closer, carefully, like approaching a stray dog. He took the documents out of the envelope and put them on the scarred and splintery table. Steve made no move to pick them up or even to look at them. Conor wondered if he needed reading glasses, like his dad.

  “These are from Mrs. Folsom’s new lawyer,” Conor said. “You’ll probably want to have your own lawyer look at them, but they’re divorce papers and a petition for a temporary restraining order against you. They’re all going to be filed next week.”

  A flicker of amusement moved across his face. “So this is a threat?”

  “No,” Conor answered honestly, “I’m just telling you what’s in the papers, since you weren’t looking at them.”

  “And this is all to get me to tell the police that Derek didn’t threaten me? Or beat the hell out of my car? His uncle’s car, as a point of fact.”

  “No,” Conor said again. “The papers are being filed no matter what. I am hoping you’ll drop the charges against Derek because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “But what about the law?” Steven Folsom’s voice was mild.

  Conor took a breath and then sat down at the picnic table across from him. Steven Folsom’s hands, on the table, were heavy and rough, but Conor could see the nails were bitten down. He made himself meet those icy eyes again.

  “Derek never expected to see you again,” Conor said softly. “None of them did. You scared them.”

  The other man’s mouth quirked. “And yet I was the one in fear of my life.” Steve patted the pockets of his denim shirt, taking out a pack of cigarettes and matches. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it, exhaling the smoke out towards the trees. When he looked back at Conor, the amusement was gone. “You talked to him? Derek?”

  “Not lately,” Conor admitted, “but he talked about you a little.”

  “I’m sure he gave you a regular laundry list of my crimes.”

  Conor looked past him. The leaves on the trees rustled gently in the slight breeze, like a thousand soft whispers. He could see why Steve had been sitting out here; it was peaceful.

  “He said you liked motorcycles,” Conor said.

  Something like sadness twisted in Steven Folsom’s face and his mouth tightened against it. He swung up quickly from the table and away from Conor, carefully pacing the yard and smoking.

  “I don’t know why you’re here,” he said. “Why you’re sticking your nose in our family’s business—all this is between me and my wife. I know I was a bad husband and a drunk, but I barely laid a hand on those kids—”

  “I’ve seen Derek’s scar,” Conor cut in, words even and precise. “Were you aiming for his kidneys with that broken bottle? You could have killed him.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at Conor. “I was aiming for his mother’s throat, actually. She was on the floor at the time, so I was swinging low.”

  Conor had been trained for months about how to keep his face still, in case cameras or people were watching. Steven Folsom’s face was blank, too, but not in the politely engaged way television favored. His face and voice were empty of any emotion; just cold, bloody facts. The stillness was more disturbing than if he had been ranting or raving. For the first time, Conor felt a finger of fear touch the back of his neck. This wasn’t staring down cranky judges, or standing up to bullies; the man in front of Conor was dangerous, and every animal instinct in him was telling him to run, run away from the predator.

  Conor made himself meet the other man’s gaze and hold it, even as beneath the table his legs twitched.

  Steve’s lined face folded into something like a smile, an echo of what Mrs. Folsom might have called his charm spread across it. He spread his hands wide, empty except for the cigarette. “Okay, you got me. I was a bad father, too. But I did my time, stopped drinking, went to meetings in prison. I’m not what I was… that’s what I wanted to tell them that day. That I want to try to make it up to them somehow.”

  “So you’re showing that by pressing charges?”

  Steven sat back down, his manner changing as though he had decided something about Conor. He spoke slowly, considering his words as he did. “I was angry when I first got sent away—I’d been angry a long time before that. But there’s not much to do in prison except think. All that anger, I thought on that. Turned it over and over in my mind ’til I thought I had the whole shape of it. And there wasn’t much to it in the end. Just a small man trying to make himself big.” One of his hands traced the cracks on the table. “I wanted to tell them—well, there’s nothing I can say, I know, but I had it in my head that I could come up with something that would explain a little. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I got out of the car. I barely recognized Maggie; she was so big, but she knew me, that’s for sure, because she started crying right away, like she was terrified. Then Barb—she saw me and—and then Derek, he started yelling. Him, I knew right away.”

  Conor forced himself not to flinch as Steven Folsom stared hard at him, face filled with terrible honesty. “You say you know my son? I know him better, because that day I looked at him and all I saw was me.”

  He lit another cigarette and Conor, released from that gaze, let himself breathe.

  Steven sighed; he looked very old. “My brother would give me regular updates on the kids while I was away. So I heard all about Derek. Fighting, stealing, in trouble with the law and school—it was like hearing my own story told back to me. Sometimes all you can do is hope your kids turn out nothing like you. That’s the only thing I can offer them now. If I let this go, if I drop the charges, he’s just gonna keep going like I did. Angry and wanting to hurt. Until something worse than
three to six months in prison stops him.” He peered at Conor through an exhale of smoke. “You want to help him? Let him stay where he is; it might be his only chance to find a different path. To save him.”

  There was silence after Steven stopped speaking, broken only by the rustle of leaves and the birds among them. Conor looked at his own hands while he thought, touching his guitar calluses, taking strength from the hours of practice he knew lay behind each one. He looked up again at Derek’s father.

  “You wouldn’t know this, but Derek spent most of this past year studying like crazy so he could graduate. I’m sure he never cared about school before, but he wanted to get that diploma because he needed to prove that he could do it. To show that he was different from you. Now, I don’t know if that’s going to happen.” Conor leaned in, trying to see Derek in this man, trying to see the person Steven Folsom might have been. “Derek is angry a lot of the time, and he can be mean. Cruel even. But that’s not everything he is. He’s not a small man trying to make himself big—it’s the opposite. I think he’s locked up everything inside him, so much that he’s scared to feel, scared of anything that isn’t a fight, because that’s all he knows. If you’re worried Derek will end up like you then sending him to prison will guarantee it.”

  Steve looked away, staring back out at the trees. Conor pressed on. “You said you wanted to try to make it up to your kids; this is how you do it. You let them go. You let them make their own choices. Maybe it’ll all turn out, maybe it won’t, but trying to force them—to fix them—that only ever makes things worse. This is your chance to be a real father, Mr. Folsom, because right now, you have your son’s whole future in your hands. Parents are supposed to try to make life better for their kids, aren’t they?”

  Conor walked back out to the front yard, legs as shaky as a colt’s. Wade was standing at the edge of the driveway, looking out at the trees, much like his brother, hands hooked in his jeans.

  “You get what you wanted?”

  Conor found his voice was wavering so he had to clear his throat several times before he could answer. “He’s dropping the charges. And he won’t fight the divorce.”

  Wade gave Conor an imaginary hat tip. “You got bigger balls than one’d expect to look at you. Though these days there ain’t much fight left in Steve.” His mouth turned down. “He’s like a ghost compared to what he was.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing? Considering how he was.”

  Wade crossed his arms. “Steve was a mean drunk, nobody’s gonna deny that, but Barb, back in the day, was a real hellcat. All I’m saying is, it takes two to tango.”

  Conor’s voice grew cold. “And yet only one person did the hitting.”

  “Yeah,” Wade stared off. “You’re not wrong there. The thing is, Conor, you’re a nice boy, from a nice family. And I know your family, both sides, so I know you don’t have much more money than we do. But it’s still nice. With supper on the table every night and kids tucked into bed when it’s dark. Maybe you got a spanking once or twice in your whole life, but I expect you weren’t ever real bad.” He raised eyebrows over his faded blue eyes. “Me and Steve, when we were young? It wasn’t like any of that. It wasn’t nice. As bad as Steve was, he never got close to what our daddy was like.”

  Conor was tired and he wanted more than anything to leave these men to their trees and memories. “So your dad was rotten to you and probably his father was to him. And so on and so on. You’d think, if anything, that would make your brother less likely to hit his family. I mean, otherwise, where does it stop?”

  Wade spat into the distance. “Why do you think I never had kids?” He gave Conor a brief up and down glance. “I don’t expect that’ll be an issue for Derek.”

  Conor took out his wallet. It was very full after his visit to the bank that morning. It was also almost all the money he currently had. “I heard Derek owes you money. For the guitar.”

  Wade snorted and waved Conor off. “Fuck. I shouldn’t’ve said anything to Barb about that, but I was pissed off. Angry about Derek, angry about Steve, angry about my whole damn family. If you see him—when you see him, tell him it’s fine. Hell, he’d already worked off most of it.”

  He regarded the cars in front of the barn and the parts scattered around them. “I liked having him work out here. He was good at it, too. I was hoping when he was done school, it would be more permanent. Like a family business.” He peered at Conor. “I don’t expect Derek will come back out here?”

  “I don’t know,” Conor said. “But if his dad is here, I can’t see it.”

  “Yeah.” Wade spat on the ground again. “Well, you tell him I said—” He ran a hand through his hair with a frustrated huff of a sigh, a very Derek-like gesture, Conor thought. “Tell him I said something nice. You can make it up. You seem like a smart kid, you’ll come up with something better than I ever could.”

  “Okay.”

  He stared off into the deepening shadows and didn’t say anything more, so Conor left him there in front of the old farmhouse and drove back into town.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The county sheriff’s office and jail was a square, ugly building of dull yellow brick. It reminded Conor of the high school, just with narrower windows and a wider parking lot, and maybe a few more police officers going in and out.

  He was standing in that parking lot, waiting nervously with Maggie while Mrs. Folsom went inside. Maggie hadn’t wanted to go in and Conor wasn’t sure if he should have come with them at all, so they kept each other company in silence. Conor felt like his skin was too tight—it was that same queasy rush of adrenaline and dread that he felt before going onstage. He bounced lightly on his toes, knowing that Derek wouldn’t want him getting soppy in front of Maggie—who acted like she knew everything, but might actually have no idea—and Mrs. Folsom, who definitely didn’t know anything about him and Derek, beyond that they were friends. As to what Conor knew about him and Derek, he was hoping that seeing Derek would settle all of it and replace his questions with some great and definite certainty.

  Waiting to go onstage had been much easier than this.

  One of the heavy double doors facing the parking lot opened, and Mrs. Folsom came out, squinting into the bright sunshine. Behind her was Derek.

  It had been months. There had been phone calls, texts, but Conor was sharply reminded that the last time he had seen Derek, he had been wearing a bulky coat, standing in the snow. Now he walked out, arms bare in a white t-shirt, with jeans and work boots, and clutching a plastic bag in his hand. His face looked pale and drawn in the sunlight, a light coating of dark stubble along his jaw, and his dark hair stuck up at all angles.

  Maggie gave a strangled cry, dropping her tough girl pose, and ran towards him. She had to go to him, because Derek, when he saw Conor standing beside her, had stopped walking and stared.

  “Hey,” Conor offered weakly.

  Maggie threw her arms around him. Derek hugged her back, but his eyes were still on Conor, face growing paler by the second. Conor stopped himself from moving towards him. Derek didn’t look glad to see him; Derek looked like he’d been slapped in the face.

  “What is he doing here?” Derek croaked.

  Mrs. Folsom, stroking the sniffling Maggie’s hair, looked up at her son. “Your friend’s been helping us. I don’t think we could’ve got you out if it weren’t for Conor.”

  Looking at him, Conor tried out a small smile, but Derek only scowled in response. “We don’t need fucking charity.”

  Both Mrs. Folsom and Maggie both realized that something was wrong and they looked from Derek to Conor and back again. “Derek—” his mother started, and Maggie finished with, “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “Whatever,” Derek said, cutting them both off. “He’s not supposed to be here. I don’t want him here.”

  “Well, he came in the car with us,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t care.” Derek pulled away from both his sister and his mother and began to pace, one
hand raking through his hair, eyes always on Conor. “I’ll go back inside. They can arrest me again. I don’t to see him.”

  “Okay. It’s okay,” Conor said. He realized his hands were spread, open and non-threatening, trying to calm. “Go on. I can call for a ride.”

  Derek jerked past him, already heading for the car.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Maggie muttered, stomping after her brother.

  “I’m so sorry, Conor,” Barb said. “He’s just—”

  “Derek,” Conor said. “Really, it’s fine. Just get him home.”

  Still murmuring apologies, she went to the car. Conor watched them drive away, and, from the backseat, Derek’s pale face stared back at him.

  “I do pick you up at the weirdest places,” Linda said when she pulled up.

  Conor got in the car. “Thanks. My ride kinda fell through.”

  He could see her giving him sideways glances as she drove out of the parking lot. “I don’t suppose my dad said anything to you lately? About me?”

  He was almost hopeful—he kept hearing that people were talking about him; it would be nice if that could be used to save him from having to share somewhat awkward secrets with his family and friend.

  “Nothing that would explain the police station.”

  Conor sighed. “It’s kind of a long, weird story.”

  “Good,” Linda said. “We can get ice cream while you tell me. I think the soft serve place is finally open.”

  The one ice cream place in town that wasn’t part of a fast food chain was a faded pink shack that was boarded up for most of the year, with a “closed for the season” sign splayed across the front door. At some point in the late spring, the grumpy old couple who ran it opened the place up without any sort of notice, or even a significant calendar date or temperature. People flocked to it all summer, knowing that, without fail, the day after Labor Day, it would be closed up again. Conor had no idea how much money the owners made during that brief season, but it definitely wasn’t a labor of love—they scowled at people who hesitated even a second over the options of vanilla, chocolate, or swirl. And requests for ice cream innovations like sprinkles or waffle cones would get you shown the door.