by Ivy Pochoda
Blake was lying, that much James was sure of. He knew Owen or something about Owen. He pocketed the pawn and hurried out the door, across the driveway in the direction of the cabin and fire pit. Blake and Patrick were drinking whiskey out of Grace’s mother’s teacups.
Britt sprang up when she saw him. She pulled him into a sloppy hug, then took his hands and together they spun in a circle. James tried to break free. But her grip was strong.
“Dance with me,” she said. “Dance.”
“I-I-I—” James said.
She was whipping him faster now, her face thrown back, her red hair streaking behind her. Four, five more revolutions and she let go, sending him careening sideways, until he tumbled to the ground. “Live a little,” Britt said, helping him up.
“He looks alive to me,” Blake said. “But you seem dead set on killing him.”
Britt pulled James back to the fire. “I want him to have fun.”
“Then give him a drink,” Blake said.
James glanced at his father. “What are you looking at me for?” Patrick said.
Britt poured a glug of whiskey into a large pickling jar.
James winced as the liquid burned his tongue, then his throat. He drained the glass quick and passed it back to Britt and started for Sam’s cabin.
“James?” Britt called. “James?”
JAMES TAPPED ON THE CABIN DOOR, THEN PUSHED IT OPEN. SAM HAD fallen asleep, a battered book on his chest. A chess set sat on the small nightstand. Several of its pieces were missing, replaced by odds and ends—a couple of bottle caps, a rock, and a paper clip. But the ones that remained matched the pawn in his pocket.
Sam’s eyes opened. He looked angry and disoriented. James fumbled for the pawn in his pocket. He held it out.
“You stole that?” Sam asked.
“I found it.” It seemed better to lie.
“So you do have magic in you.”
“I guess.” James approached the bed and put the pawn next to the chessboard.
“So are you going to set it up or not?” Sam asked.
“You want to play?”
“The fuck you think.” The sick man pushed himself up to sitting and whipped his braid over his shoulder.
James hated chess mostly because Owen always beat him. He only retained a vague memory of what piece went where, which could move in what direction and why.
He put the pawn in its place and lined up the rest of the pieces, not quite sure if he’d mixed up which of those went on the right or left. Then he looked at the makeshift pieces. “What’s what?” he asked.
“Christ,” Sam said, snatching the board away. “You got a worse memory than Blake.” He slammed the bottle caps and the rocks into place. “Remember now?”
James looked at the chessmen. It sort of made sense and if everything stayed in place he could keep track. But once the pieces were scattered across the board it was going to be hard.
“You waiting for anything in particular?”
“No.”
“So you gonna open or what?”
James’s hand hovered above the board. He couldn’t remember whether black or white moved first. His fingers came to rest on a black pawn. Sam slapped his hand away. “The fuck’s happened to you?”
James quickly snatched a white pawn and slid two spaces forward.
The music outside switched from Top 40 to classic rock. And soon Blake’s voice rose above the rest singing along to every other word.
James was able to hang with Sam for a few moves, shuffling around pawns and hoping the rock that was supposed to be a knight. But after that his pieces began to disappear while Sam took over his side of the board.
“I’m sick as fuck,” Sam said, “but you’re playing like you’re brain-dead. I guess I must have been taking it easy on you.”
James had thought it was another one of Owen’s stories invented to make him feel small and naive. But his twin hadn’t been lying. He had been camped out with Blake and Sam—the two criminals.
“You know my brother,” he said.
Sam looked up from the board. “Nope,” he said. The sweat was coming down his nose.
“He was in the cabin with you.”
“You think because Blake’s got me all hopped up on pills that I’m crazy.”
“He was in the cabin with you. He told me.”
“No, boy. The only person in the cabin with me and Blake was you. Except you were different then.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were different. And don’t act like I’m too far gone to know better. You were smarter, tougher. Not so much of a pussy. But now look at you. Asking all sorts of questions. Tiptoeing around like you’re afraid. But I know the truth. I know what you are.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Oh, I do. And just because you’re back home doesn’t mean you can hide it from me. The world needs bad men as much as it needs good ones. You don’t believe me, but you’ve got a darkness in you. I can see it from here. I can smell it and I’m never wrong. You’re more like us than you think.” He flung his braid to his other shoulder. “Your move.”
James reached across the board. He was pretty certain Sam had lured him into a trap so the next move would be checkmate. He took the sick man’s queen. As he picked up the piece, Sam’s hand wrapped around his wrist and twisted so James’s underarm was facing up.
Sam’s grip was clammy and strong. James’s skin burned as the sick man rotated his arm back and forth, running his eyes from James’s elbow to wrist.
“Brujo,” Sam said.
James tried to pull his arm away. Sam held tight.
“Brujo. Where is it?” Up close James could see that Sam’s pupils were constricted to pinpricks. He pulled James closer, dragging him up toward the head of the bed.
“Let go.” James wriggled his wrist side to side.
With his other hand Sam traced the skin of James’s forearm. “I cut you there to there. Deep. Down to the bone.” His breath was sour, like the decay was bubbling up. “Now there’s no scar.”
“Let go!” James shouted.
“In the cabin you stole my spirit. I fell asleep and you stole my spirit so I wouldn’t heal. I had to punish you.”
James shook his head. “It wasn’t me.”
“Of course it was. I’m sick but I’m not blind.”
“It was my brother.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. Sweat dripped from his brow. “It was you. I cut you there to there,” he repeated. He yanked on James’s arm, making it burn worse. “I cut you so my soul could fly out. So I could have my spirit back.”
James thought of the cut on Owen’s arm, the dark, crusted wound, and the white flicker of bone beneath.
“The scar is gone. You are a brujo. You’ve come back to try to take my spirit again.” Sam’s eyes were wild, widening, showing the yellowed whites.
James yanked his arm harder now. But Sam pulled him closer and reached under the mattress. In the dim light of the cabin James saw the knife. Sam held it up. Its blade was speckled with rust.
James screamed, hoping his voice could be heard above the music.
Sam tried to find his mark. James grasped the hand holding the knife and managed to turn it away from him and toward the sick man. Sam was exhausted by their brief struggle. His arm wobbled.
There was a moment when he could have pushed Sam’s hand in any direction he’d wanted, down toward the mattress, behind his back. James had the upper hand. He could have freed the handle from Sam’s fingers and fled the cabin.
Instead James pressed harder, bending Sam’s arm back, not stopping until the big man plunged the knife between his own collarbone and neck.
Behind him he heard a scream. He turned and saw Britt standing in the doorway holding the whiskey. She dropped the bottle and it shattered on the threshold. She rushed to James, pulling him off Sam. She yanked the knife free and a fountain of blood flew up from the wound, soaking them both, splattering over the walls and ceiling
.
James was thrashing, but Britt restrained him, pinning him in her arms. He could smell the wood smoke on her clothes and hair.
He could hear footsteps outside—Blake then Patrick, then the rest of the interns. Blake rushed to the bed, taking Sam in his arms.
The two men lay on the bed, Blake cradling Sam as his life leaked onto the thin mattress and down to the floor. The sick man’s body went slack. Blake shook him once, then again as if he could restore his pulse, restart his breath. Then he stood, letting his friend’s body slump onto the bed.
He looked around the cabin with a savage expression. The sound that came out of him was an untamed wail.
Blake ripped his hat from his head and raked his fingers through his hair. He wiped them away, then locked his gaze on James. “You,” he said. He lunged forward.
“No,” Britt said. She still held James tight. Now she scooted in front of him, blocking him from Blake. “It wasn’t him. It was me.”
Blake looked from one to the other. James’s heart went wild. He tried to speak, but Britt drove her nails into his arm. “It was me.”
“What—” James said. Britt dug deeper.
“It was me,” she said. “He wanted me to-to-to . . .” She was stammering. “He had a knife.”
PATRICK KEPT WATCH FROM THE PORCH, HIS EYES ON THE CABIN WHERE Blake was slumped at Sam’s side. When Blake left his friend and headed away from the farm, he intercepted him. Blake would not be returning. He would not be reporting whatever happened in the cabin. He had too much at stake. Patrick made certain of this.
When Patrick was sure Blake was gone, he and Gideon loaded Sam’s body into the back of Patrick’s pickup. Along with Britt, they drove deep into the desert, along the unmarked sand roads only Patrick was familiar with. They didn’t invite James.
When he was alone James stood under the shower until he ran out the warm water, until gooseflesh popped on his arms.
Deep down he’d always imagined that one day he’d join Owen, that he’d take the bus or demand his father drive him. That would never happen now.
Owen and Grace would live in a Dutch colonial house not too far from their grandmother’s. Owen would join the swim team in high school and go surfing with his friends. He’d save up for a nice car in a flashy color. He’d cruise down the PCH with his girlfriend who would put her feet on the dash. He’d watch the sunset from Matador Beach and camp out in Paradise Cove.
James could see it all. And he would have to settle for the desert sand.
He turned off the shower. He didn’t bother drying off, but walked straight out of the house, past the campfire, past the cabins, toward the national park. When he found a patch of ground clear of arrowwood and creosote bushes, he lay down. He tried to dig his toes into the sand, tried to recall the feeling of the cold, wet sand a few feet below the surface near the water. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the sound of the wind sprinting across the desert was the crashing sea.
28
REN, LOS ANGELES, 2010
They say the condemned sleep because why the fuck not, and the guilty because it’s game over. In juvie Ren had noticed that boys who didn’t give a shit about what they’d done, no matter how messed up their crimes, slept like babies, relaying their dreams of filthy trysts with video vixens in the mornings. Their unimaginative porn fantasies didn’t interest Ren. What interested him was that they’d slept.
The night after Ren had signed on with Puppet, he slept longer and deeper than he had in months, in years even. He slept through Laila’s racking coughs. Slept through Darrell crooning along to Teddy Pendergrass. Slept through the smells, sounds, and suffering around him. He slept way past the time when the rest of the folks on Crocker were packing up their camps, moving on to whatever got them through their days. He slept until the sun had finally fought its way through the gray haze that blanketed the sky.
Laila’s tent was up but she was out. And that was a blessing. Because Ren had a feeling his mother would be able to read it on his face—his decision to go bad. Because she’d suspected all along and always that there was something dark inside Ren that had made him pull that trigger, shoot the corrections officer who had been crossing the courtyard, bring down an innocent man in front of his ten-year-old son.
There had been no explaining to Laila that it had been not simply an accident, but the dumbest luck of all. That Ren hadn’t aimed, hadn’t even looked.
But if she saw him today, she’d see it written all across his face. She’d know that he’d become what she thought he’d always been. And that would make Ren lose his nerve. So he kept away from Crocker until dark, until it was time to find Puppet’s boy.
THE DEPUTY WAS WAITING BY THE PARK, A RED HOODIE COVERING HIS face. He gestured for Ren to follow him. They marched to a doorway where he slid a paper bag into the pouch pocket of Ren’s sweatshirt. The gun made the material sag, so Ren held his hand under the fabric until he could transfer the piece to his pants.
The deputy gave Ren an address, told him what floor he’d find the dude. “Alls you do is leave your ID at the door. But don’t forget it on the way out. Motherfuckers do stupid shit,” he said. “Now Puppet don’t expect you’ll recover shit. Motherfucking junkies use it all and trade the rest.”
“So—” Ren asked.
“So you supposed to send a message, is what Puppet says—send a good message, make some good paper.”
So that was the deal. Puppet didn’t expect him to deliver cash or goods, he expected Ren to hit hard.
“Now we not saying lay the motherfucker out. Just let him know he messed with the wrong motherfuckers.” The guy pulled his hood farther over his face and turned tail before Ren could object.
Ren watched the deputy slip away, just another Skid Row regular on the make or take. He felt the gun sagging in his sweatshirt. It was cold consolation that he didn’t have to kill his target. Because what he had to do gave little relief—beat the dude or scare him shitless.
He stuck his hand into his pocket, crinkling it through the paper bag until he hit cold metal. He couldn’t believe the weight of the thing, couldn’t believe that his twelve-year-old hand had lifted something similar.
He tried to remember raising that gun, nosing it through the busted blinds in the project window. There must have been a recoil, a kickback that sent him flying. But his only memory was like a movie or video game, visual not physical. Because he hadn’t marked the action at the time and hadn’t ascribed any particular importance to shooting that gun. He hadn’t expected it would hit anything and fuck his shit up for good.
He wrapped his hand around the shaft, trying to remember if it had felt the same before, if he’d marveled at the weight. Two hands. He’d used two hands—he could see it now. It was only later, when the older bangers fled, that he’d posed with the gun execution style, turning it sideways, sighting his own third eye in the mirror, his other hand cupped over his mouth like a bandanna. Bang.
He measured his gait. He didn’t want to look like he was on the prowl or fleeing some scene. He didn’t slink or keep to the shadows. He even took down his hood so any passing cruiser might see that he was carrying on out in the open, nothing to hide, nothing worth stopping for.
He ran his fingers over the trigger, the raised ridges on the grip. He felt for the opening out of which the bullet would fly.
He didn’t have to fire the gun. He just had to hold it. He could take the bullets out. He should. He just needed somewhere out of the way.
Ren crossed Fifth and turned up Wall. On the smaller street he realized that he wasn’t alone. Someone was at his back in lockstep. He tensed his hand around the gun. At the next corner he paused under a streetlight and glanced back. Except for people rolled up in their bags, he was alone.
He headed west. Now his pursuer was at his side, bumping his elbow, crowding his space. And he knew. The gun had brought the ghost, not that Marcus’s specter needed an invitation these days. Ren walked faster, but his companion kept
up, never breaking stride. He gripped the gun tighter. The ghost came closer, his cold, liquid presence chilling Ren.
“It’s not like I have a fucking choice,” Ren said. “I don’t have a fucking choice.”
He stopped under another streetlamp, hoping the glow and radiant electric warmth might drive the ghost off. But the man crowded in, merging his body with Ren’s, filling him with a cold current.
His heart beat double time and then for a split second seemed as if it didn’t beat at all. His nerves were brittle like steel wool. He had to do the job quick before this particular bout of crazy took over and he did something that snared the cops’ notice and he got hauled in on vagrancy, then booked for possession of a firearm. And who knew where that gun had been, how many bodies were in its rearview.
Do it quick.
Get home quicker.
Ren turned into the small alleyway church, the dimmest, narrowest place he could think of—a place out of cops’ view. He squatted down against the wall and took out the gun. There wasn’t enough light to make the black metal glint or gleam.
HE’D GRIPPED IT WITH TWO HANDS, RAISED IT, BLINDLY AIMING AWAY from him. He’d closed his eyes. Now he remembered that, too. He’d been afraid. And he’d squeezed the trigger fast, wanting to get the dare done quick so the older bangers wouldn’t tease him anymore.
The kickback had bruised a bone at the base of his palm. He remembered that as well, remembered pressing a finger into the bruise during the first days he spent waiting to see if he’d be tried as an adult or a kid, as he listened to the juvie rep tell him what he’d done, what he was up against, what was happening. He drove that finger into the bruise, grinding toward the bone, trying to summon any sort of feeling at all.
I can hold your piece?
The older boys had laughed, mimicking his prepubescent voice.
