An Incidental Reckoning (28 page)

But had it really been his fault?

Or Jon’s?

Will hadn’t had time to meet anyone else, form friendships, settle in and find his place in the new student body. Jon had been raised there. Other kids knew him, or at least knew who he was. Without any clue, thinking back now without the assumption of friendship with Jon, he had hooked up with a kid destined to become a punching bag, and by association made himself a target as well. He had planned to take a beating from Stape, maybe even throw some punches of his own, and then move on before Jon blundered into the fight and messed it all up.

From this new, clearer perspective, Jon owed him. Owed him big. Of course, he wouldn’t see that, would only see how Will had drawn him into the mess at the campground by provoking Brody. But did it matter what Jon thought, when anyone with a modicum of objectivity could see the truth?

Jon wouldn’t have to do much at all, just help with the getaway maybe. He figured his “friend” more of a liability than anything, especially if he asked him to do too much heavy lifting. But he owed Will something.

Two weeks. Wait and see.

Chapter 19

Jon and Erin returned from their vacation after ten days, having called their respective bosses for permission to extend their trip. Jon had drawn from several months’ worth of accrued time going to waste. He expected Brad to give him a hard time, but instead received his blessing, guessed that Brad considered a situation with him separated from Chas as a plus. Erin told him over a candlelit dinner in the cabin with take-out and a bottle of champagne that the doctor she worked for, a terminally single but incurably romantic woman, ate up the story of love deep in the Poconos. Her description made him blush, but he couldn’t deny the truth behind it.

Once the letter had been sent to the convenience store and money to the corporate office, they had talked little about the situation, but its reality remained the reason for all that they did; like the diagnosis of a tumor spurring the creation a bucket list, with activities crammed into every available moment.

For Jon it felt something like the camping trips with Will, based on a common and life-changing experience, but of course the nights, and often the days, had been much more fun than sharing a tent with Will. He didn’t realize he could perform so often just shy of forty. Things in that department had cooled down as the days passed, but still they made love with a surprising frequency.

They had also gone for a horseback ride, taken several more hiking trips, and even went dancing one night, Jon only to humor Erin who laughed at his awkward moves, even while she entranced him with the new red sequin dress she had bought for the occasion.

Jon hated to come home, feared that returning to the familiar trappings of their life would slowly drag this new thing back into the stagnant waters they had always known. He determined to make sure that didn’t happen, would go out tomorrow and buy his wife the first bouquet of roses since their third anniversary. Then, she had received them without much enthusiasm and he had stopped wasting money, based on her description of his gift. He hoped she wouldn’t see it that way now.

Jon carried in the last of their luggage while Erin went next door to their neighbors’ house to get the mail graciously collected in their absence. She returned with a bag full of junk mail and sales flyers, and another of newspapers.

Puffing under the weight of ten days’ worth of news, Erin said, “Do you want to look through these? Otherwise I’m going to put them in the recycling bin.”

“Nah, go ahead and throw them out. Usually nothing in there anyway. I don’t even know why we still get that thing.”

“Great. Here, why don’t you go toss them. I have to use the bathroom.” She smiled prettily at him and dropped the bag on the floor.

Jon scowled and considered firing a retort after her, but then shook his head, smiled, and picked up the bag. He randomly pulled a paper out and flattened the pink translucent covering against the contents inside. The headline said something about putting in a new sewer line in nearby Acre City. Yeah, he needed to know the details of that; and the decisions of local school boards to buy new textbooks and the potluck dinner over at the Methodist church. He liked to read the comics, but wasn’t so hard up for entertainment that he planned to tear them all open for that small prize. He picked out one more, saw something about major repairs on Route 28 and took the paper out to see it clearly, skimmed the article and read that a gas tanker had blown up and destroyed a part of the roadway. Two people dead. That was a shame. What a horrible way to go. He hoped they had been killed by the impact and not the fire. He sat down, intending to read the whole story when Erin called from upstairs.

“Jon? I can’t get the toilet to flush. Can you come take a look at it?”

He considered setting the paper aside for his return, but then stuffed it back into the grocery bag with the rest of them. He knew he was only attracted to the gruesome details, and decided he’d had enough of those, up close and personal, to last a long while. He didn’t drive on that section of 28 to get to work, anyway.
How come they never reported the stuff that inspired people, or at least where it could be read without digging through page after page of blood and guts?

“Coming!”

He put the bag by the front door to take outside after resolving this new crisis, or failing that calling in someone who could.

Jon set the phone down, had dialed Will’s entire number except the last digit before changing his mind. Still too angry. But not as angry as before. He knew Erin wouldn’t like him making any unnecessary contact at all, had expressed her strong views on Will Roup and his foolish plan that had started all of this. But although she knew now what had brought them together, he didn’t feel that she understood it. And beneath his anger, he still did understand, and knew that eventually he would call and extend forgiveness to Will. He didn’t think it would stretch out as far as another camping trip - if indeed they were available to make that decision after Brody had gotten through with them, a reality that kept intruding into every corner of his life - but he needed to rid himself of anything that would grow and fester and turn into a burden he didn’t want to carry. But if he called now, some of his anger might leak out over the phone, and perhaps widen the rift instead of healing it.

Erin had gone to bed, and he sat alone in the living room, both of them too exhausted to consider any further activities before sleep. Jon knew he should go too, but found himself thinking of Will, wondered how he was weathering the aftermath of their weekend and dealing with the uncertain future. Will had always been impulsive and excitable. When they were kids he had often talked about striking back, but it was all just talk; the exception, of course, his recent provocation of Brody. Jon hoped he wouldn't do anything stupid, like driving down and trying to take Brody on himself. That Brody lived so close to Tanville was unsettling. Jon didn’t know where, exactly, and didn’t want to. Knowledge might tempt him to go on his own surveillance mission, and who knew where that might lead?

He racked his brain, trying once more to think of a way out of all this and sighed in resignation. He and Erin had argued on the drive home about involving the police. Jon still feared what could happen if they did, believed that Brody held them by the balls and only their compliance kept him from squeezing. He thought at first that their raised voices drowning out Bono singing "With Or Without You" on the car radio had put a taint on their weekend, until realizing that they had never argued much before, had never felt passionate enough about any shared concern to bother.

How stupid they had been. He had known what Erin wanted, or rather didn’t want, when they got married. But then he hadn’t known enough about himself, that too much of Jon Albridge had been left undernourished and allowed to atrophy. And the same applied to Erin, he believed. Jon knew some of it came from her mother; when she visited, he sometimes caught her regarding him as though he was plotting evil deeds instead of making spaghetti or watching television.

He thought about his neighbors, his co-workers, the people they presented themselves to be that he had always assumed real. He suspected now that most of them fit the molds they had been forced into, unless they’d had the knowledge and strength to break them. Or had them shattered.

If he wasn't the Jon Albridge he had always allowed, what else could he do? Run a marathon? Finish a triathlon, even? Go to college? He stopped short, the thought settling like a seed and growing on contact. College. Why the hell not? He could stay at his job and start taking classes, work towards a degree, something more fulfilling. He'd squeezed about every drop of enjoyment, imagined and real, from driving a forklift.

Jon went to bed, feeling lighter than before, full of possibilities and futures. Somehow this would work out. It had to. Why would he be allowed a vision of something more, and still within his grasp and not voiced in a litany of curses and regrets from a urine stained mattress in a nursing home. He prayed silently, God one of the abstract things he had never much considered, asking Him for a chance. Not for an easy road, but a chance to make better choices. And he asked that if he couldn’t get out of the thing with Brody, that God see him through that, too, explaining that he really didn’t have much of a choice, in case God hadn’t caught that. Jon asked not to get hurt or killed and the opposite for Brody - that is if God thought he might want to do that. And in a swell of emotion, he asked that He extend His protection to Erin…and to Will, too.

“Hello?”

“Will. Hey. It’s Jon.” He paused, waiting for Will’s reaction. It had taken almost two weeks before he believed himself ready to make the call, and even if he had miscalculated, didn’t want to delay any longer and allow Will to draw his own conclusions from the silence. Just as when they had endured the events of Ravensburg, Jon believed they needed to stick together until this had ended. He had Erin to confide in, but didn’t plan to tell Will that. He couldn’t assume Will had told his wife, and so he might be spending endless nights staring at the ceiling with the darkness and its unlimited shadows to amplify his fears. He could offer him at least some small measure of support.

“Jon?”

“Yeah. How are you, Will?”

“I’m...okay. You?”

“Suprisingly well…I guess…considering.”

“Good, Jon, that’s good.”

Jon waited for him to offer something more, pick up the conversation, but Will waited for him to speak again. Things had already turned awkward, but not in the way he had expected. He thought Will might react with guilt or anger, but instead sounded calm and detached. As though Jon had surprised him with someone else in the room. Maybe his wife, and he couldn’t talk right now.

“Should I call back later?”

“No, now’s good.”

He waited a few heartbeats, then continued.

“Okay. Well, listen. I need to get this out there first. I want to tell you… that I understand why you did it. Brought Brody to the campground. I’m not happy with how things turned out, but I guess we’ll have to see it through. Unless you’ve figured any way to get out of it. I haven’t.”

“Hey, thanks Jon. That's real big of you. And no, I haven't seen any way out.”

Jon stiffened at the sarcasm, didn’t understand its source but then chose not to dwell on it. He had said what he needed to say and meant it. For now, that was enough.

“Did you...have you heard from him?” Will asked.

"No. I've been away for a while. Erin and I went out to the Poconos to spend some time together. I checked the e-mail and phone messages when I got back, but nothing there. I didn't expect anything so soon anyway. You haven’t, have you? Heard anything?"

Jon waited, could hear Will breathing, and a thought arose that Brody was there, with Will, maybe listening in. He forced a smile and pushed away the image, but couldn’t shake it entirely.

"Will?"

"I have, Jon. He stopped by my apartment, said to expect the first e-mail soon. Everything will be all right, I think, if we just do what he tells us."

"Wait. He was there? What did he say? Did he threaten you?"

"Yeah, he did. Same kind of thing that he said to that Amish kid, remember?"

"Yes." The memories of the trip had softened a bit around the edges due to time, distance, and the company of Erin. Now everything rushed back hard: the sights, sounds, the feel of Chris' cold dead skin against his. His back seemed to throb again in tandem with his heart, as if he had just finished shoveling the last pie-makerful of dirt over the corpse.