Faithful Unto Death

by Stephanie Jaye Evans

  Baby Bear got up and ambled over to me. He laid that huge, heavy head on my lap and sent up his pathetic look. That was meant to convey that he hadn’t had any affection all day long and there was this place behind his left ear that really needed some attention. Normally, he would have gotten to me with those eyes, but I was feeling sore about the secrets he’d been keeping from me. When he saw I wasn’t going to come through, he wandered off to gnaw on a young sapling that would have liked to grow up to be a tree, if only there weren’t random tree-eating Newfoundlands in the neighborhood.

  “What was I going to do? I mean, HD had already bought the thing. He’d driven it off the lot. I really couldn’t say no.”

  I couldn’t have said no to that monster truck at sixteen. Even at my age, I’d find it hard to say no to limitless free gas.

  “But this ‘master of the universe’ thing he’s been doing lately? I don’t know where that comes from. It’s weird. It’s like he’s channeling Jett Rink.”

  “You’ve seen Giant?”

  “Like fifty times. It’s HD’s favorite movie. It’s practically his only movie. ‘Money isn’t everything, Jett.’ ‘Not when you’ve got it.’”

  He had the voices down and I gave a laugh.

  “HD, he wasn’t always all about the money and what he could make happen with it. That stuff was cool, but … he’s got a cabin over in Johnson City. Have you been to Johnson City?”

  “I’ve gone through on my way to Pedernales Falls.”

  “I love that place. That’s my favorite Texas park. That’s why HD bought the Johnson City place, a long time ago when my mom was young, because it’s so close to Pedernales Falls. Two bedrooms and then one room that’s kitchen and living room all together. It’s nothing fancy. Window unit air conditioners. It looks like he furnished it out of the Salvation Army. In one room there’s four sets of bunk beds—one on each wall. My cousins are all a lot older than me, and when HD took them out to the cabin, he would fill every bunk. By the time I was old enough, it was just me and him. My cousins were in college or off and married. I didn’t mind. HD would tell stories about the tricks my cousins would play on him, and what it was like in Texas when he was growing up. The house HD grew up in? Didn’t have any air-conditioning. Imagine Texas in the summer with no air-conditioning.”

  There are lots of people in Texas who live through our monstrous summers with no air-conditioning. Not by choice.

  Alex lay back in the grass, his knees up.

  “Jenasy hated the place. She said it smelled. She and Beanie would go shopping when HD took me on trips.”

  “Last time I went to the cabin, it was me and Dad. Right before Christmas. Johnson City isn’t much, but they do a big deal over Christmas lights. We hiked the State Park all day. Each night we had dinner at the Friendly Bar Bistro. Live entertainment, and on Sunday night, all these cool old people get together and play every instrument you can think of. Keyboard and fiddle and steel guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. I swear, one old dude was playing the ukulele. And they were good. It’s not Dad’s kind of thing at all, but he loved it. He had such a great freaking time. He was happy. He acted like everything was okay. Like he wasn’t—my dad is almost never happy. Not with me.”

  Silence. Alex’s knees went up to his chest and he rolled over on his side and wrapped his arms around his head. His shoulders shook. Baby Bear stopped chewing on the tree and loped over. He pawed at Alex’s arms and snaked his tongue over the kid’s face, making a worried rumble. I stood over the kid, not happy with him, either, feeling his heartbreak, and not wanting to. I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

  “Hey. Alex. I know you miss him.”

  “I don’t know if I do.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I knew my dad. Not really. I don’t think any of us did.” He shook his head.

  “Alex, it’s natural to have some confused feelings—”

  He sat up and looked at me. One arm holding Baby Bear, the other fending off the dog tongue.

  “Are you going to tell me you understand?”

  I stopped.

  “Because you don’t. You don’t understand anything. You don’t know enough to understand.”

  Fair enough. I squatted down. My running shorts didn’t give me as much protection from the prickles and burrs as Alex’s jeans, so I balanced on the balls of my feet.

  “I’m off track,” I said. “I did see HD today, but it was Dr. Garcia who came to see me.”

  Alex didn’t change position, but he got a sort of listening intensity about him. “Yeah? What did Granddad want?”

  “He’s worried about you.”

  Alex gave a snort and threw his hands out.

  “Yeah? Well, this would be a good time to be worried about me. I’m worried about me, too. I’ve never even had a traffic ticket before. What do you think; is there a spin I can put on all this? Work it as some kind of ‘life experience,’ use it as an edge to get into UT?”

  He crossed his legs in the grass and started picking at the rubber on his shoes. The full moon was high now and shining on his straight, fair hair. Baby Bear laid his heavy head on the boy’s lap. Alex massaged the silky black ears. Seeing as good as he was with Baby Bear, he couldn’t be all bad, even if he was a murderer.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’m worried about him, too—not for the same reason he’s worried about me, I mean, I don’t think he killed Dad or anything—”

  I interrupted. “Your grandfather does not think there’s any chance whatsoever of your having killed your dad.”

  “No?” He lifted his head up to look at me. “Well, that’s good to hear. He got pretty exercised last night when he talked to me after the police let me go and gave me my truck back. Truck is cleaner than it has been since the day HD gave it to me. And my lighter is gone and someone took the twenty dollars I had in the console.”

  Alex made a fist and stretched one of Baby’s great ears over the closed hand. He stroked the ear while Baby Bear pushed into his hand, moaning with gratitude.

  “Granddad is an old man, you know. I don’t think about that most of the time. He’s still working at the free clinics, you know, couple a days a month, and he still skis, if you can believe that. He’s good, too. He taught me when I was three. He shouldn’t ski. It’s crazy for an old guy to go flying down a mountain.”

  He paused. Those had been better times for the Garcia family.

  “Last night, though, he looked old. His hands were trembling. This has been a terrible shock for him.” There was a pause. “Shit.”

  He tilted his face up and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to keep the tears in. He was as fair as his grandfather was dark, but at the moment, Alex reminded me of Dr. Garcia, of his father, the three men, their gestures so alike. He didn’t look a bit like HD.

  I said, “Alex, I’m real sorry about your dad. I know I told you all that at the house, but I really am, for you and your mom and your granddad. For Jenasy. I’m even more sorry that you’ve been drawn into all this. And … Alex, was Jo with you that night?”

  His fine-boned face shot up and he stared at me like he meant to stare me into consternation. It didn’t work.

  “Was she?” I asked.

  Another snort and he shook his head, not in denial but over the unreasonableness of adults in persisting to butt in where they didn’t have any business.

  “The reason I’m asking, Alex, it’s not that I think I have the right to know everything Jo does, everywhere Jo goes, who she’s with. I do have that right, but we won’t go there right now.”

  This time he made the sound that used to be written as “pshaw” and plucked a long grass and nibbled its root. I wanted to remind him that people walk their dogs on the levee.

  “The reason I’m asking is because Detective Wanderley is going to want to question her. I hope you don’t think she’d lie for you—”

  “In a heartbeat,” he shot back.

  Just more and more good news.

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nbsp; I said, “Would you want her to?”

  Silence, a long one this time, but I let it drag on. I wanted the answer to my question. It would tell me a lot about the young man sitting in front of me.

  When he broke the silence, it wasn’t to answer my question. He asked one of his own.

  Alex said, “If I tell you something, and it’s not about the”—he stumbled over the word—“the murder, it didn’t have anything to do with Dad dying, would you swear not to tell anyone? Not the police, not Mom, and never, ever Granddad. Most of all, you can’t tell Jo. Could you swear that? On the Bible?”

  It was my turn to be quiet. I don’t make promises lightly. They matter to me.

  I said, “Alex, you know we don’t operate like the Catholic Church. I’m not a priest, and if you confess—”

  “It’s nothing I did.”

  “My not telling, that’s not going to put anyone in any danger?”

  “I’m trying to keep someone safe.”

  So, I mean, this was a sticky situation I could be letting myself in for. Whatever Alex wanted to tell me could be dangerous information, dangerous to someone anyway. I don’t think a sixteen-year-old is the best judge of … anything. But if the kid told me, at least he’d have a grown-up on his side to help him.

  And I might be able to talk him into telling the right person, once I knew what the problem was. There was Jo, too, another reason to make this promise. Whatever it was, if Jo was involved, I wanted to be in a position to help.

  I silently asked God to guide me but I didn’t feel anything more specific than a strong urge to know what it was Alex was hiding and that was as likely to be coming from me as from Him. More likely.

  Alex was waiting, his eyes intent on mine.

  “All right,” I said, reluctant to let the binding words out of my mouth, “I promise.”

  He kept staring at me, trying to decide if he could trust me or not, and I didn’t look away. Either my word was good enough for the boy or it wasn’t. After a minute, he nodded and stood up to take his cell phone out. Again, he made no attempt to keep me from hearing what he was saying.

  “Jo.” His voice was soft and gruff when he said her name. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I mean I’m okay, everything isn’t fine but nothing you don’t know about. No, I’m not at the truck, that’s why I’m calling, I’ll be a little longer than I said. Yeah, he’s here”—he flicked a look at me, and pushed his thick hair back—“but it’s okay. Listen, I have to go. No, I’ll tell you later. I’ll call you soon. I love you, Jo, and listen, I am so freaking proud of you. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all going to work out, no matter what”—another look at me—“bye.”

  He snapped the phone shut, contemplated the toes of his shoes for a second or two, and then said, “Could we walk instead of sitting in the weeds out here?”

  I said sure and Baby Bear was more than agreeable to the idea. We continued the way I had started out, away from my house and toward Elkins Road. I was thinking about how he had called Jo, not forgetting his promise, and I liked him for that but I was also thinking about his saying, “I love you,” which sounded way too intimate and possessive for my tastes. I wondered if Jo was saying it back.

  By night, the backyards we were passing were as different as they were by day. We passed a yard where the homeowners had lined their flower beds in dimly glowing solar lamps. I’ve been tempted to try those. They don’t give off much light, but they’re easy to install and not too expensive. Solar lamps are nowhere near as effective as the kind electricians put up. You can get a lighting specialist to come out to your home and get lights put up in the branches of your trees, highlighting the pool and I don’t know what all. The Garcias’ yard is lit like that, front and back, and it’s real pretty when they give a party at night.

  I was maundering on about these things as Alex and I walked, giving him time to get his thoughts together, and that’s what I was talking about when we got to the gate that keeps unauthorized vehicles off the levee. I say a gate—there are two posts with a chain between them. You find a gate everywhere a road cuts through the levee—to keep teenagers from driving out onto the unpaved levee surface.

  We had come out of the trees to Elkins Road. To the right was the Avalon Community Center parking lot, where Alex’s truck had been parked the night his father died. Where it was parked now. Ahead and to the left was the corner of the golf course where Graham Garcia’s body had been found.

  I stopped talking. I had exhausted the topic of outdoor lighting, which neither of us had any real interest in. I’d been filling up the silence before I found out something I might not want to know. We crossed to the other side of Elkins and stood on the sidewalk under the streetlight. To maintain the levee system, the road is raised here, so we walked up through the thick, overgrown grass until we were sheltered in the belt of trees rimming the seventh hole. We looked down through the trees into the golf course. It was quiet, and in an unimaginative but well-groomed, lush, green way, it was pretty. There were lights on in the custom houses backing up to the golf course. Cars went by every now and then. From where we were standing, up close to the trunk of a fallen log, we were shielded by the trees, and you couldn’t have seen us from the golf course unless you’d really been looking.

  “You swear on your honor?”

  I said I did.

  Alex said, “I was sitting on the log.”

  “What time was this?”

  “It was late.” He cut his eyes at me. “It was seriously late.”

  He sat down on the log.

  “I wanted Jo to meet me that night but she said she couldn’t. I came over anyway. To be closer to her. Maybe she would change her mind if I was already here. And she did. She said she could give me half an hour. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. We sat in the truck and talked. Then she said she had to go. She had a test next morning. So I walked her home”—he cut his eyes at me—“the back way.”

  Meaning the levee to the back gate to the garage roof, to her bedroom window …

  “And then I came back. I wasn’t ready to go home. So I sat here, just quiet, you know?”

  “Alex, I don’t much want you calling Jo after—”

  “So I sat here, thinking about Jo, and I see this guy come walking out on the golf course, and you know, it’s late and dark, so already he has my attention, and when he gets closer, I can see it’s Dad. Which was totally random—it’s o-dark-thirty on the golf course, and he comes walking out like it’s Saturday afternoon and it’s his turn at the tee.”

  “Where had he come from?” I asked. “Where was he parked?”

  Alex didn’t answer directly. He stretched his arm out to point where the golf course cart path veered down to tunnel under Alcorn Oaks and continue on to the other side of the golf course. He pointed.

  “That’s where I saw them.”

  “Them?”

  “Dad and Jo.”

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t actually Jo.”

  “You just this second said—”

  “It couldn’t have been Jo. She went back home to study. And anyway, I picked her up from school on Monday. She said it wasn’t her.” Alex’s mouth twisted.

  “You actually asked Jo if she had—”

  “It made her mad.”

  “You think?”

  “Listen! It looked like Jo, okay? I’m telling you, it freaking looked like her!” Alex’s voice was shaky.

  “You’re saying your dad was with a girl? Not a woman, but a girl?”

  He plowed on, not acknowledging my questions. “He was standing there under the trees, acting like he was practicing his putting, which he wasn’t.” He gave a snort of derision. “You don’t practice putting in the rough. And you don’t practice swings that late at night on an unlit course. And you don’t putt with a Big Bertha.” He glanced at me. “A Big Bertha is a driver.”

  I didn’t give a hoot about practice swings.

  “So that was different.
I mean, he was out there in the middle of the night, on the golf course, in the rough. Then the whole putting charade. And then she came out of the tunnel, her long hair all down her back, and Dad ran up to her and he put his arms around her and they kissed.”

  He turned his burning eyes on me.

  “No,” I said.

  His eyes didn’t waver. “He bent her over backward. If I’d had a gun, I would have shot him.” He leaned over and spit on the ground, then turned his back on the golf course and started walking to his truck, Baby Bear ambling at his side. “Then I left. I didn’t need to see any more. I didn’t want to see any more.”

  When he got to the Ford, he beeped the locks and climbed inside. It’s a big truck for a kid that age. He unrolled the window and I put my hands on it, trying to keep him in place so I could tell him it wasn’t Jo, it couldn’t have been Jo. Because, you know, two hundred plus pounds can keep an F-150 in place.

  “Could she have been older, Alex? Like, thirty?” Thirty would be better. Thirty would be much better.

  “I told you. I thought it was Jo. She was Jo’s age.”

  “Alex, Jo is fourteen.”

  He looked at me.

  I had to step back quick to keep my arms from getting torn off when he reversed and peeled out of the parking lot. When he topped Elkins, I could see the cell phone at his ear. I knew he was calling Jo. The way he’d promised to.

  Baby Bear must have thought he was jogging back to the house with an old man. That’s how I felt. Old and shocked and sick at heart. Not believing what I’d heard. Graham Garcia with a child. Because a fourteen-year-old is a child.

  Alex was mistaken. His father couldn’t have been with someone that young. Alex had said it was late, it was dark; the kid would have been tired, and he’d had Jo on his mind. The mind can play tricks on you.

  It couldn’t have been a girl that young.

  The idea of a man Graham Garcia’s age touching one of my daughters … If Graham Garcia had touched my child, if he had so much as laid his little finger on her, I would have killed him myself. I would have killed that man. I would—someone else had killed Graham Garcia.