“Can I say something here? You’re too down on yourself, Jack. I mean, you were in love during college, and you didn’t commit for life. So what? Every other guy who’s gone to college has that story. I dated a girl named Bethany Carson at Illinois, and we talked about marriage all the time. But it didn’t happen. I’m sure she’s as happy about it as I am. My wife, Katie, is happy it didn’t happen too.”
“For you, there was a Katie. For me, there wasn’t. That’s not the only reason I think about Jenny … And let me say for the record, my life hasn’t been all about years of lonely pining. I’ve more than made peace with the things I can’t change. Still, she’s someone who never acted against me, never said an evil word, even when I acted my worst.” I leaned forward; I wanted Bud to hear the weight of my words. “Yet I treated her so commonly, acting like her kind were a nickel for nine. But the truth is, we were together even when we were separate. Different towns, different places, but still always connected. There’s hardly been a day I haven’t thought of her.”
“You got fixated. Nobody’s worth that much mind play.”
“It was obviously more complex than that.”
“All right, no argument. What’d you say when she picked up the phone?”
“I apologized for the way I’d treated her. Asked if she’d be able to forgive me. I expected she couldn’t, but she was light-years from unforgiveness. She was delighted to hear from me. Time apart was irrelevant. She just repeated what she’d said before—that she knew we were meant to be together.”
“Were you seeing other women in Chicago?”
“No. Sometimes a group of us went out on the town, but life was pretty superficial.”
“Then what happened?”
“We talked for an hour. I told her I was doing well and invited her to Chicago and told her I’d show her the town. She said, ‘You shouldn’t say that unless you mean it. I might just take you up on it.’”
“She forgave you?”
“Yes. I’d sent her something in the mail a few days earlier.”
“What?”
“A coffee-table book of London gardens—something I knew she’d love—and a pair of sapphire earrings I hoped would help heal the wounds.”
“Nice touch.”
“She told me there was nothing that would ever break her love for me.”
“Did she come to Chicago?”
“No. We hung up and didn’t speak again for months. She was in her last semester at school by then, and I wasn’t coming back. We went on with our lives, a kind of suspended animation. I ran wild, and she waited for meaningful commitment.”
The telephone rang. I glanced over at the caller ID. “Arthur Reed Pub” appeared in the letter box, and I put the call on speakerphone.
“Hello, Arthur.”
Bud went into the kitchen to make a sandwich.
“Jack, Jack, Jack. My rainmaker friend.” Arthur’s voice came through giddy and greedy.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m calling you with news, Jack. Thought you could use a little break from the writing. You’ve heard of the Hollywood director Adi Seffe, right?”
“No.”
“Well, you should get to know him, because this morning he bought the film rights to Laborers.” Arthur let out with a burst.
“You’re kidding.”
I looked at Bud spreading mayo on a slice of bread. He rolled his eyes, disgusted by the freight train of blessing pulling once again into my town.
“I never kid about money. He’s developing a full-length feature film based on your book. It’s a natural when you think about how successful it’s been as a vehicle.”
“But it’s nonfiction.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a great story. I spoke with him and his agent this morning. It was the Time cover that sealed the deal. He said they’re considering Nate Hillman and Rachel LoMack for the leads.”
“Playing who?”
“You and your love interest, of course!”
“I don’t have a love interest.”
“That’s Hollywood.”
Bud and I exchanged grimaces.
“They are going to keep the faith content though, right?” I asked. “You wouldn’t make a deal with them without a guarantee …”
“Adi Seffe is an Oscar-nominated director. It’s my understanding he’s a Christian. He said he wants to explore the ‘spiritual story inside the human story.’ He talks a lot like you.”
Arthur waxed on about the movie. After interpreting Bud’s hand signals, I reminded Arthur to send him a check.
The two of us worked the rest of the afternoon, taking a three-hour dinner break so he could go home and see his family. I called Bud at home and told him to just stay put. We could get back to it after Christmas.
Bud’s wife, Katie, had picked up the phone. She told me she’d read Laborers and loved it. Imagine that. Bud Abbott living with a Jack Clayton fan. I still didn’t trust Bud, but I had hopes.
That night under the twin shadows of doubt and fear, the writing continued. The next stop on the journey would be the most difficult of all.
~ TWENTY-FIVE ~
This is the sound of my soul,
this is the sound.
—Spandau Ballet
“True”
Had I known that in five short hours, my best friend would be dead, I would have sobered up enough to jettison my Chicago life, or simply have given up my own life. As a hot iron leaves its scalding brand on leather, so that day left its brand on me. The world forever changed the moment Mitchell’s life forever ended. I carry the guilt and the grief inside me like a tumor, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of a death I was responsible for. I’m sorry, Mitch. I’ve said these words to you thousands of times before, but not enough.
“When I get done in here, I want to be out of this apartment in like two seconds,” Brian called from the bathroom, where he stood shaving at the sink. He had the attention span of a spastic gnat.
Over his right shoulder, I could see my reflection in the medicine-cabinet mirror. A thin black belt held his pants to his one-hundred-thirty-pound frame.
Mitchell sat with me in the living room. It was early June. Jenny had just graduated. She sent me an announcement card with a pretty graduation photo and a two-page letter. Erin and Jenny went back to Indianapolis after the ceremony, and I had asked Mitchell to come up to Chicago for a visit.
Mitch was working hard to catch up with Erin. He’d sold the Cutlass to pay his tuition and put his Harley-Davidson up for sale in Overton to help pay for an August wedding. He rode the bus from Providence that afternoon, and I was planning to drive him back on Sunday, a quick five-hour trip.
“What do you think of Chicago?”
“It’s cool. I’ll like it even better when we get that pizza you promised.”
“We will … tomorrow. Tonight I’m taking you to a party that’s going to knock you out.”
“I didn’t come here to party; I came here to spend time with Jack Clayton. No one’s really sure what’s become of him.”
“Take a look.” I extended my arms, showing off the new me.
He wasn’t impressed. “I don’t understand why you left Providence for this. You didn’t talk it over with anyone, not even me.”
“I traded bad grades and going broke for less stress and a lot of money. All in all, I’d say it’s worked out rather well.”
“Not so much for Jenny—”
“Now don’t start …”
“What about school? Are you dropping out?”
“No … But what’s the rush? I’m happy you found Erin. Why can’t you be happy for me?”
I went to the kitchen.
“Hey, as long as you’re in there, grab me a beer,” Brian shouted from the bathroom. After every cutting stroke of the razor, he would swish the blade in the dirty water in a way that reminded me of a pendulum swinging inside a clock.
I tossed an unopened can of beer at Brian and sat next
to Mitch.
“You surprised me when you left. You surprised all of us. I didn’t think you had it in you. Don’t you remember how you dragged me to Providence in the first place?”
“Seems to have worked out.”
“A year later you disappear, ripping a hole in Jenny’s heart.”
“Look, we’ve worked it out, okay? Why don’t you understand that? I talked to her on the phone not long ago—”
“That was Christmas, Jack. Six months ago. You did everything you could to make her fall in love with you, then you crushed her, then called her to make up, sent her some guilt-induced gift, then you disappeared again.”
“I didn’t know you were so up on the details of my life.”
“Yeah, I know about it all,” Mitch said. “Every time Jenny cries over you, Erin’s there to listen. Don’t you know what you’ve done to her? I know we used to be best friends, but I wouldn’t be here if Erin didn’t think someone ought to make an effort to reel you back in.”
Used to be best friends?
Brian stepped out from the bathroom. “We’re supposed to meet up with Jason and Terry at eight over at the Fire Yard. This is going to be the night of your lives, gentlemen. I promise you. Mitchell, I hope you like having a good time ’cause that’s what’s going to happen to you, my friend.”
I smiled, checking to see if the bravado was boosting Mitchell’s spirits. It wasn’t.
“Before we party tonight, there’s something we gotta do,” Brian said, his tone was casual and calm. “I’ve got to see a friend on business.”
“What kind of business?” Mitch asked.
Brian rolled his eyes and stepped back into the bathroom. Mitch wanted me to say we weren’t going to the party, that we were going out for pizza instead, but I wanted to show him the Chicago I’d been running around in. Maybe then he would see the logic of my choices. I wanted him to be the Mitchell who’d gone to Providence with me.
“I’m different than I was,” he told me. “I’m a Christian now. I was baptized at Erin and Jenny’s church. I don’t want to go to this party. Why don’t we do something else, just the two of us, and let Brian go his own way?”
“Look, let’s go for an hour. If you aren’t having the best time, we’ll get a cab and do whatever you want. Deal?”
Brian picked his keys up from the table. “You ladies ready for the ball? Let’s go.”
Brian’s black BMW flew through the city streets until we entered areas I no longer recognized. Climbing a steep hill in the darkness, we crossed some invisible line between “good neighborhood” and a neighborhood where the streetlights had all been burnt or shot out. I looked at Mitchell in the dark of the backseat slouched low in the shadow.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked.
Mitchell nodded in silent misery.
Sometimes when I dream of that night, it’s all different. We don’t go to the party. We go downtown to Pizzeria Uno and sit at a table. We talk and laugh until it’s late, and he tells me he understands why I had to go but that it’s time to come home. That I have to go back to Providence. And in that dream, I just know he’s right. We drive through the night and surprise the girls the next morning in Indianapolis. We take them to breakfast at the Waffle House, and everything is put back together.
“How much farther?” I asked. The streets began to look like war zones. There were abandoned cars, buildings with boarded-over windows.
“Half a mile,” Brian said, but there was fear in his voice. His bony hands were gripping the wheel too tightly, his Ichabod Crane face so close he could have hung his nose on it.
He’d been cocky back at the apartment, but not here. I felt the adrenaline rush of blue anger race up the back of my spine. He’d said it was safe, but it wasn’t. We weren’t just his passengers, we were his protection.
“Brian!” I said in a voice that startled him. “Turn the car back.”
“Shut up! We’re almost there.”
“Turn the car around. You’re about to pee in your pants. You know something you’re not telling us.”
“Don’t be such a baby. We’re here, and we’re going to do this.”
Brian turned the car into a drive, the last house on a deadened street, and shoved the shifter into park, leaving the motor running. A lone streetlight behind us beamed murky light on a row of slum houses.
“What are we doing here?” Mitchell asked.
“Relax,” Brian instructed. “I’ll be back in two minutes.” He pushed open the glove box, revealing a handgun.
“What are you doing?”
He shushed me and slid out the door. “Use it if you need to.”
Brian entered the gate of a chain-link fence. Through the shadows we saw his dark figure ascend the front-porch stairs, cross the plank-boarded porch, and knock on the front door. It opened, and he slipped inside.
Mitch and I sat in silence. We were no longer college goof-offs going to a party. We left that world six blocks earlier. This was a different, dangerous world.
“Well, this is interesting,” said Mitchell.
Outside, the night was hot and humid. I could feel beads of perspiration roll underneath my shirt, and my skin itched as if ants were crawling up my back.
“It’ll be all right,” I said as much to myself as to Mitchell.
Five minutes passed, and no Brian. Then the silence broke with the sound of a creaking screen door. Two men stood in the shadows on the porch next door, the orange glow from their cigarettes burning bright when they inhaled.
“This isn’t what I had planned,” I said.
“It’s not what I had in mind either.”
“I know I’m not doing everything the way I should, but—”
“Nothing about this is right.” Mitchell was nervous and upset. “I’ve never thought of you as a loser, but that’s what you’ve become.”
“I’m not a loser. I told you, this isn’t my scene. I don’t do drugs. This is Brian’s thing.”
“Yeah, and look who lives with him. Look who goes to his parties and goes along with everything he does. You knew he was doing a drug deal tonight.”
“I didn’t know … Okay, I knew it was drugs, but I didn’t know we would be here.”
“Where did you think we’d go? Kmart? Face the facts. You left Providence, you moved in with a drug dealer, you work where he works, you go to his parties. It’s not just his life, Jack; it’s yours.”
Brian emerged from the dark house, closing the door behind him. As he walked back through the yard, one of the smoking men said something to him, and Brian turned.
”Why don’t you mind your own business?” he sneered, suddenly cocky again.
Instantly the shadowy figures leaped over the high wall and landed solidly in the front yard. In the thick, dreamless half dark, we could see their faces, both of them had shaved heads and muscular physiques. One of the men moved aggressively toward Brian, who turned on his heel and raised the palms of his hands defensively.
“Hey, man, it’s cool. I’m just jerkin’ ya! It’s cool, it’s cool!”
The man continued moving closer to Brian, his pace slowing.
Mitch said, “Looks like company.”
Three more guys appeared in the street behind us, one tapping the barrel of a gun on Mitch’s window.
Brian was talking to the first guy in tones that sounded like he was seeking terms for release, then bluffing and threatening. Finally he said, “Listen, why don’t I just make this right?” He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag, and laid it on the car. The man snatched the bag off the hood and opened it. He took it back to the porch.
We were on a razor’s edge, ready at any second to leap from the car and fight for our lives.
The man returned, demanding Brian’s money. My mouth felt dry, and I closed my eyes to pray. Brian was walking backward, toward the car.
“You want money?” he said.
Step.
“You want my money?”
Step.
“You’re taking everything from me, man!” Brian reached for the door handle. “I’ve got a thousand dollars in the glove box. You can have it, but then we’re out of here.” He coolly opened the car door, his body language saying, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to give you a thousand dollars.”
But the men came closer. It was a slow-motion race, but Brian had the lead. He put his knee on the driver’s seat and reached inside the car for the glove box. The men glared at him.
Brian whispered, “When I say ‘now,’ duck.” He pulled the gun from the glove box, along with road maps. “Five seconds.”
In the gloomy streetlight, Brian held out the maps. “You want my stinkin’ money? Here!” He threw the maps over the hood and into the yard.
As the man reached for his thousand dollars in the dark, Brian whispered, “Now” and jumped in, shoving the gears into reverse, hitting the gas hard, and knocking the window tapper to the ground with the back bumper.
We ducked for cover as the sound of gunshots shattered the eerie silence. Brian lowered his head, shifted into drive, and mashed the pedal into the floor. Tires squealed and screamed, the sickening smell of burning rubber filled the car.
Pang, pang, pang.
Small holes appeared in the windows. A second later we were out of there, two blocks away, going sixty miles an hour through dark streets.
The car was silent. I shook my head in disbelief and thought of how I would beat up Brian when we got home. I brushed pieces of broken glass off my shirt and jeans, then turned back to check on Mitchell. He was still on the floor, shaking with fear.
“Hey, buddy, it’s all right. Come on. Get up.”
But Mitchell didn’t move. I grabbed his arm and pushed him up onto the backseat. There was blood on his face, in his hair, on his hands.
“Mitchell’s been shot! Brian, get us to the hospital!”
Brian slowed down, weighing the consequences of bringing in a shooting victim and dealing with the police.
“Brian, now!” I screamed.
“All right!”
I climbed into the backseat to examine Mitchell. The streetlights high above us dispersed their light in rhythm, brighter as they approached, dimmer as they passed. Mitchell was covered in blood, too much blood.
Providence: Once Upon a Second Chance Page 18
