by Karen Hall
“Known a lot of armed robbers, have you?”
“All right. Never mind.”
“No, I’ll tell you. It’s just . . . a stupid story. It’s embarrassing.”
She leaned closer, which amused him. He hadn’t meant he was embarrassed for the waiter to hear it.
“My brothers and I used to rob convenience stores . . . recreationally. You know. Some guys play football. Anyway, this was one night, about a year or so after Ethan died. I don’t know where Tallen was, but I was alone and I was just driving around, and I found this two-pump gas station and general store out in the middle of nowhere. I was bored . . .”
“And you just happened to have a gun in the car?”
“As fate would have it,” he said, smiling. “Nothing major. Something in the Saturday night special family. I stuck it in my pocket and ambled in. There was absolutely nobody there except me and the cashier. I got kind of depressed right away because the cashier was this girl, about my age. Long blond hair. Really cute. But it’s kind of hard to flirt with someone and point a gun at her at the same time.”
Randa laughed.
“No,” he said, becoming serious. “I looked at her and I felt bad because I knew I was going to scare her. But I also knew I wasn’t going to hurt her, so I figured she’d be scared for a few minutes and then have a great story to tell for the rest of her life; it wasn’t really a bad deal. Anyway, I told her to give me whatever was in the cash register, and she said all the money was in a cash box under the counter. I said fine, I didn’t care where it came from. She reached under the counter and came up with a sawed-off shotgun.”
Randa’s eyes got wide. “What did you do?”
“What could I do? I wasn’t going to shoot her, and she sure as hell was going to shoot me.”
He laughed, remembering. He’d never told this story to anyone. It wasn’t really such a bad story, now that he heard it.
“She made me go to the pay phone and call the cops and tell them to come get me. Made me use my own dime.”
“And then?”
He shrugged. “Then I did ten years for it. That part’s not funny.”
Her smile faded.
“Don’t stop smiling,” he said. “I love your smile.”
She smiled again, and then she leaned in and kissed him. He kissed her back, and when he came up for air, the only thing he could think to say was “You don’t know me.”
“Well, I’m trying to remedy that.”
“I like your remedy.”
“I don’t want to go back to LA.”
“I don’t want you to.”
But how can I ask you to stay here and watch me sink further and further into God-knows-what?
“What do you want to do?” he asked, letting himself temporarily off the hook.
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“I want to go to the front desk, take out my American Express card, get a nice suite on the twenty-second floor, and stay here tonight. With you.”
He couldn’t speak.
“Does that scare you to death?” she asked, though he was sure she already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
“Okay. What do you want?”
“I want you to hurry back with the key.”
There was a warm wind blowing, gentle against his face. He and Randa were lying on a blanket on a beach, watching the sunset, a bottle of champagne between them. They took turns drinking from the bottle, giggling. He kissed her.
“AWAY . . .”
He pulled back. The damned voice again.
“AWAY . . .” The woman’s voice; a throaty whisper that traveled on the breeze.
“AWAY . . .”
He stood up, looking around. Beyond the beach, the sand disappeared into a thick forest. He knew, somehow, that the voice was coming from there.
“AWAY . . . AWAY . . .”
He got up and followed it, determined to confront his tormentor. The woods were dense. The sun was blocked by the trees, and it was as dark as night.
He stopped short as he saw her up ahead. She was sitting on a log, waiting for him. It was the blond girl—the one from before. She was laughing at him now, a hollow, evil laugh.
“This is the house they built for Jack,” she said with scornful glee.
“I’m sick of this!” he screamed. “Go play your games with someone else!”
She just kept laughing. His anger amused her. Her laughter infuriated him.
“I mean it!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of my life!”
She stopped laughing, but retained a taunting smirk.
“What life?” she asked. “Your girlfriend? The one who’s sleeping with you because she was in love with your brother?”
He reached for the first thing he could find—a thick branch that had fallen off a tree—and started for her. She watched him coming and began laughing again. Her laughter and her lack of fear fueled his anger until he was lost in it. He lifted the branch and brought it down on her head with all his strength. The force of it knocked her off the log. She staggered a couple of steps; he brought the branch down on the back of her head, knocking her to the ground, her face buried in the dirt and pine needles. Consumed by his anger, he continued to pummel her until his fury was spent and he was too tired to go on. He dropped to the ground and gasped for air. He looked at her still form on the ground beside him and didn’t feel any remorse. She deserved it for making him think he was crazy all this time. It took him a moment to realize he was covered in blood, and then the enormity of what he had done started to sink in.
Christ. How was he going to explain this to Randa? How was he going to tell her he’d beaten this girl’s head to a pulp because she’d been torturing him in a voice that Randa could never hear? Jesus, how was he going to tell Randa that he’d killed someone?
He reached for the girl. He took her by the shoulder and turned her over.
The bloodied, lifeless face in front of him was Randa’s.
“Jack!” A voice in the distance. Hands on him. Whose?
“Jack, it’s okay! Jack!”
He woke up.
“Jack, it’s okay! Jack!”
The fact that she kept calling his name made him realize he was still screaming. He forced himself to stop. “Randa . . .”
She’s alive! She’s here!
“Jack, it’s okay. You just had a bad dream.”
He could feel her arms around him. He was still breathing hard and he could barely control his trembling, but he took her face in his hands and looked at her.
“Randa, you’re okay . . .”
“I’m fine. You were dreaming.”
He pulled her to him and held her as close as he could without hurting her. He rocked her and kissed her on the forehead and said her name over and over. He could feel her arms on his back, hugging him. It was okay.
“Was it one of those dreams?”
“I thought you . . . were hurt.”
“Well, I’m not.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Here, lie back down.” He obeyed. She pulled him close to her and held him. She stroked his cheek with her hand and whispered, “It’s okay.” There was no way he could explain. It wasn’t even the dream that had scared him so badly. It was that feeling, when he was lost in that homicidal fury. It was the familiarity of that feeling. He’d been there before, and not in a dream. But he couldn’t tell her that.
He felt her kissing his shoulder.
“I’m okay,” he whispered, lying again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She put her head on his shoulder and snuggled closer.
She fell asleep after a few minutes. He stared at the ceiling and waited for the sun to come up.
He dressed in the sitting room, where his clothes were still lying in a pile on the floor. He put on the jacket and stuffed the tie in the pocket, then looked at himself in the mirror over the wet bar. Nothing he could do about shaving, but the hair on his face was so blond it took him days to look unkempt.
He didn’t know why he was concerned about his appearance, except that he felt so horrible about what he was doing, he didn’t want anyone to look at him and suspect anything close to the truth.
There was a MARTA station on Lenox Road, within easy walking distance. He could take the MARTA downtown, then catch a bus back to Barton. Maybe when she woke up and found him gone, she’d be angry enough to give up without a fight.
What if I’m blowing this all out of proportion? What if I’m leaving her for no good reason?
You can’t risk it. You can’t gamble with her life.
He stuck his head in the door to the bedroom to look at her one more time. The room was darkened by the heavy hotel drapes, and the light from the doorway fell across her like a pale spotlight. Her face was partly covered by her hair, but he could see how peaceful she looked. There was a tiny smile that showed up only on the corners of her lips. Her arm was still bent upward beside her where he’d slipped out from under it.
It came back to him in a rush, the memory of her skin against his, the smell of her hair, the safety he’d felt in her arms. But his safety wasn’t the issue.
He forced himself to turn away from her, closing the door softly behind him. When he left the suite, he hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. By the time she woke up, there’d be a safe distance between them.
Making his way down Lenox Road, it was all he could do not to relive the night in his mind. The good part. The part that, up until the nightmare, was easily the best night of his life. Why did she have to show up at the exact moment he was disintegrating? But then, he was a Landry. What else should he expect?
Maybe he should have told her. Maybe he should have let her decide whether or not she wanted to be in love with a lunatic. They could just enjoy his sane periods while they lasted, then she could come and visit him in the asylum.
It’s too dangerous.
What? He looked around, then realized the voice was clearly internal this time, although it was as obvious and as intrusive as the “outside” voice.
You know who you are.
What is that supposed to mean?
You know what it means.
It was true. He knew. He’d known for a long time. What would happen the first time something triggered one of those lethal moments that crop up in any relationship? The first time he wanted to strangle her for something. Would he?
It’s not like you don’t have it in you.
Yeah, thanks. I’d almost forgotten.
He didn’t need to be reminded of the incident that had ruled his every waking moment for the last decade. The night that had, for all intents and purposes, ended his life. Provoked by what? Anything worth throwing his life away? Hardly. One mouth-breathing hillbilly yelling at a TV screen. One drunk, ignorant redneck exercising his constitutional right to free speech.
“Oh, shut that ACLU bitch up and fry the bastard!”
And then an unaccountable lapse of time, until he was suddenly aware of people pulling on him, shouting, and the drunk on the floor, his face a strange purplish red, his eyes bulging, and Jack’s hands around his throat. The strength in those hands when people had tried to pry them off. The fury into which his consciousness had dissolved, in that unknown moment when he had unleashed whatever was inside him and then just stood out of its way. And the most frightening part—that even after he’d realized what he was doing, he’d still wanted to kill the guy. And if the others hadn’t been there to stop him . . .
I would have.
At Cathy’s trailer later, in the early hours before dawn, holding on to her like a drowning man clinging to a buoy.
“Jack, you didn’t kill the guy.”
“But I would have.”
“You don’t know that.”
He knew it. Knew it then, knew it now. And every minute in between, even though he rarely let himself think about it head-on. He couldn’t. It was excruciating. That’s what people never realized—what you could never explain to the “they’re just animals” crowd. The pain of hurting someone that way. (And the pain that made you want to.) He could only imagine what that pain would be like if he’d actually killed the guy . . .
Was that what had happened to Tallen? Had something snapped inside him and called forth some uncontrollable rage? How long could such a thing last? Long enough, after the initial impulse, for Tallen to find the gun, head to Alabama (a two-hour drive even if he was going ninety), park the car, go into the church? (Why a church? And why that church, as opposed to all the others he must have driven past? They didn’t even know any Catholics.) Long enough to climb the stairs to the balcony and (from what witnesses had described) sit there waiting for the right moment—when everyone stood up to sing, unwittingly lining themselves up like beer cans on a fence rail? (Had Tallen specifically waited for them to sing “Joy to the World”? Something in that logic made a strange kind of sense to Jack—not that any of it made any real sense.)
If he’d been in some kind of wild fury, why wouldn’t he have opened fire on the local Dairy Queen? Or a local church, if it had to be a church? It was Christmas Eve, it wasn’t like he had to go far to find a church that was holding services. Why did he drive almost two hundred miles? Was he trying to outrun it somehow, whatever “it” was? Then why did he give up?
No, it wasn’t possible. No one could have sustained a blind rage for that length of time. He had to have known what he was doing. Still, that wasn’t the way Tallen had described it, the one time they’d talked about it.
Jack had spent the entire year trying to get Tallen to open up about it. The only thing Tallen would ever say was “I’ll tell you someday. I don’t want to talk about it now.” Finally, the night before Tallen’s execution, Jack had pressed the point.
“Tal, I need to know what happened.”
“No, you don’t. How’s that gonna change anything?”
“I don’t want to spend my life wondering.”
“Then don’t.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, since when is there something that you can’t tell me?”
“Since last Christmas Eve.”
“Why? Do you think it would change how I feel about you?”
“I just don’t see the point.”
“The point is that I’m the one who’s gonna have to live with this for the rest of my life, so at least do me the courtesy of telling me what it is that I’m living with!”
Tallen had been quiet for a long time, staring at the floor. Then, finally, he’d sighed—a long sigh, as if he were exhaling something more than air. The macho façade had melted away before Jack’s eyes, and when Tallen looked up, Jack had seen a flash of the guy he used to know.
“Okay. If I tell you this, you’d better swear to me you’re not gonna tell the ACLU or the Atlanta Constitution or anybody else. You don’t even tell Mom.”
“All right. I swear.”
“I haven’t told you because . . . I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean?”
”I don’t remember. Driving there, going into the church, any of it. I don’t even know where I got the damned gun.”
“Are you serious?”
“No, it’s a joke. Of course I’m serious. I remember calling Mom that night, looking for you. She said you had to work and you wouldn’t get there until after midnight. Cam was there and the two of them were going out to eat, did I want to come? I said yes, just because I knew how much it would piss Cam off. I remember getting into the car and starting to drive to the house. The next thing I remember, I was lying in the church parking lot with a cop pushing my face into the gravel with one hand and pointing a gun at me with the other, saying if I moved, he’d blow me to Hell where I belonged.”
“Tallen . . . were you . . .”
“No, I wasn’t on anything. And you know I’d tell you if I was.”
“Did you tell any of this to the shrink?”
“No.”
“Your lawyer?”
“No.”
“Why t
he hell not? Are you crazy? It might have made a difference.”
“I know.”
Their eyes had locked, and Tallen hadn’t taken it any further. He didn’t have to. Jack knew. Now it made sense, why Tallen had been so insistent about dropping all his appeals. Tallen didn’t want to live, because he didn’t want to live with what he had done. Especially since he had no memory of it, because he’d never be able to understand it, and it would never get any easier. Somehow, all of that was conveyed in the look that passed between them. No more was ever said about the crime. They’d spent the rest of their time together reliving some of their escapades, and talking about Lucy and what Jack was going to do about her, and going over the disposition of Tallen’s few worldly goods.
Jack had never planned to stop on the way home. He certainly hadn’t planned to stop at a bar. He’d made up his mind he wasn’t going to drink until after Tallen was dead. But he had underestimated how hard it was going to be to leave Tallen. (“Tell Mom . . . just tell her I love her. Tell Cam to take care of himself, not that he won’t anyway. And, you . . . you just”—his voice cracking—“. . . God, Jack . . .” ) That was as far as Tallen could get—as close as he could come to saying good-bye to Jack. The guards had let Tallen hug Jack. Hadn’t even told him when to stop. Jack had prayed that they would. It was the most agonizing decision he’d ever made: at what moment to let go of his brother, knowing he’d never touch him—never see him—again. When he’d finally pulled himself away, all he could do was look Tallen in the eye and nod. If he’d tried to say anything, he would have started sobbing and embarrassed them both. He’d managed to mouth a silent “I love you, Tal,” and then turned and walked away without looking back.
He’d underestimated how hard that was going to be, even though he’d expected it to be devastating. He hadn’t thought about having to walk through that parking lot, through the carnival of TV news crews and cameras and weeping protesters and festive revelers. Tailgate parties. High school kids with six-packs and buckets of fried chicken. They’d come with dates, for Christ’s sake.
“So, we could go to a movie, or we could go over to Huntsville and have a picnic while they kill that guy.”
