An Incidental Reckoning (9 page)

Chapter 7

Will continued to shiver as they sat on the ground, watching Brody laugh. He felt his blood pressure rise until his entire body seemed to pulse with the beating of his heart. He wanted to strike out at Brody. Punch him until his face caved in, heedless of the gun, not caring if he died in the effort. The only thing that prevented it was Jon. The deep shame that he had set this up, and put Jon in the middle of it.

He had just assumed that Jon would share his rage and need to strike back at Brody. As his life had disintegrated, he searched for the cause, dug for the roots, and became convinced that the source lay in those two years when Brody had owned them…and then the two years after, when Brody had left for bigger things but left them as pariahs to their peers, a freak show traveling the halls to biology and calculus class. He had no doubt that their solidarity played a part in keeping others out. But the fact that he felt his shame visible like a second skin to anyone that looked at or spoke to him compounded his distrust of others and aided in creating a barrier as solid as steel and concrete. He had no other history in that school than the kid that fought for Brody. And the laughter often heard drifting back after passing a group of kids did not arise from his imagination.

And this barrier had remained in place throughout his life, into college and beyond. He had worked hard, seeking to prove that he was a man and not some guy’s bitch, got married and had a son. And to some degree it helped. But after the novelty of each event wore off - as his marriage lost its excitement and he realized that parenting required hard work and his job bored him despite the possible income if he just worked a little harder – the years from high school remained, like a raw wound that no amount of salve would heal. Or perhaps he just hadn’t found the right one.

He thought that re-establishing a bond with Jon might do it, had searched for and found him after decades of separation. He had often thought about Jon, how he was doing, how much Stape still factored in who he was. But he found it hard to broach the subjct on their trips. If the past troubled Jon to any large degree, he didn’t show it, and Will feared letting on how it ate at him all the time.

And it did help, for a while. If Jon didn't verbalize it, Jon understood. Will returned from their camping trips feeling better, but as the days spread out beyond the trip his edginess and bitterness crept back to their accustomed places at the helm.

Will had planned to tell him wife several times, hoping that she might help him rise above it. But each time, approaching the point of no return, he balked and aborted his plans. He feared her reaction, that she would shrug it off as something trivial to just put behind him, or worse that she would see him as weak, lose respect for him and then desire. Find out that he was not the man she consented to marry. That had happened anyway. He hadn’t told Jon about their separation, about living in a small, barely furnished apartment in Erie. She had complained about an emotional wall that she couldn’t breach, and was tired of feeling alone even when they sat in the same room. He should have said something then, but he couldn’t summon the courage.

And then, sitting in that apartment one night, he saw a newspaper article about the drug trade in Erie while on his way to the sports page. He read it out of boredom and curiosity and came across a line about a Brody Stape, formerly a player in the heroin market, doing ten years but due for release. He read those lines again and again, as though they would offer more information, tell what this meant for him, what he should do. Because he had to do something. This had been given to him. Perhaps he had to confront Brody; even fight him if necessary, whatever the exorcism required. If he stood up to him now, it could negate all that had come before. He could go back to Michelle whole. He could even tell her then, what he had done, so she would know who her man was.

Of course, he had other problems. He had slept with one of the caterer’s staff at a sales conference a year ago. He had chosen his career over her and his son at countless junctures, but had shrugged off their disappointment and anger, imagined the expressions of contentment once he had finally made it. To fix it all, he had to go back to the start, right the greatest wrong and then move up the line from there.

It wasn’t hard to find Stape. He came back to live in the house his parents had occupied during high school. Will had been there before, as a high school sophomore, watching from the woods on a bluff that surrounded the place, looking out over the cornfield for his tormentor, imagining a wild attack, blood and freedom. On the few occasions that he did glimpse Brody, he balled up his fists and dared himself to do…something. But he never took the dare, slipped away back to his bicycle hidden in the trees and then on home to stare at the ceiling in his room and ponder the meaning of the word coward.

He had felt like that kid again, at first, when driving past after Brody’s release from prison. The Mustang sat in the driveway, but it was early evening and no lights burned in the house. After his third pass, he slowed and then stopped, pulling about a hundred yards away to the side of the country lane on which he had seen no cars at all in the half hour he had used it. He put his flashers on, in case someone stopped or came out of the house and so could claim car trouble. He found the rocks in the soft dirt at the edge of the cornfield that the road bisected, taking the largest two that he could find and carry.

His palms sweated, and he found it hard to breathe as he walked towards the house, passing over the abstract designs of tar drizzled onto the road to fill potholes, listening for the bark of a dog or the bang of a door.

The corn ran almost up to the end of the driveway on this side, with just a thin strip of lawn as a buffer. He stepped into the last row and took deep breaths, felt the sweat bloom beneath his shirt, wondered what he, a nearly middle-aged man, was doing here but the boy inside with unfinished business knew only too well. It was nearly dusk, the details and colors of the daylight fading into shapes and shades of gray. He took one more breath, blew it out, and stepped into the yard. He stood still, watching the house, listening for any other sound than the hum of a distant lawnmower rushing to beat the darkness and the mixed languages of insects. A slight breeze rippled through the cornstalks and produced a scratching sound that grew to a crescendo and then ebbed away.

Will ran, throwing away all caution, and heaved the first stone like a shot-put through the back window, creating a hole where it passed through with a curtain of shattered glass sagging into the vehicle in orbit. He ran to the front of the car, let out a whoop and launched the second stone through the windshield. His now empty hands twitched, demanding to engage in more destruction and he returned to the cornfield, found a rock nearly the size of his own head and hauled it up, stumbling to the Mustang, forcing it even higher until he could bring it down on the hood with some expectation of damage. The bang and screech of metal brought him up short. He had forgotten to watch the house or the road, and now he stood still again, slowly scanning everything within his field of vision.

He saw no one, but fear had settled in and Will quickly walked back into the corn and then down the row to the road. He returned to his car without incident and drove towards Tanville, flush with the small victory and eager to celebrate with the one person that could appreciate it.

But as the excitement faded, as his pulse slowed and the sweat in his shirt dried, Will felt hollow, like a coward, failing to overcome that singular dragon he had come out to slay. But he could not find the courage to go back and wait until Brody came home. The Idea of Brody loomed large in his mind, a nemesis that had only grown since high school, his reach extending across decades. If anything, he would be far worse, more powerful, his cruelty and viciousness honed by his time in prison, sharpened through contact with men like himself and worse. And Will had done nothing to prepare himself for any event that required physical confrontation.

He went back home, back to Erie, and went through the motions of what remained of his life, but he felt sure that everyone – his customers, the girl at the checkout counter, the man walking his dog on the other side of the street – could all see inside him, see the ingredients of shame and fear comprising the coward that walked among them, had already weighed and found him wanting. He slogged through the winter, trying to forge ahead but the nearness of the thing that he had set in motion but failed to finish worked at him like stones in his pocket, another added each day until he bowed under its weight.

In March, with the date of the camping trip set, he drove back to Tanville and slipped an envelope into Brody’s mailbox and sped away. It read:

I’m the guy that wrecked your car. I’ll be at Ravensburg State Park the second weekend of May if you want to discuss it.

He didn’t include that he had acquired a pistol, nor did he explain that he wouldn’t be alone; either to Brody, or to Jon. But Jon belonged there, too, so that they could finally make things right. He had second thoughts and sleepless nights afterward, ultimately glad that the note was now irretrievable, the only option left not to show up. He grappled with fear, waves that would hit him without warning when he forgot and then remembered the looming deadline. Several times he nearly contacted Jon, to call off the camping trip. But in the end, the gun made the difference. No matter what nature of devil Stape might be, he wasn’t bulletproof.

When the bikers had pulled into the camp, he had expected instant recognition if one proved to be Stape, all the while his heart beating double time. But the article he had read did not include a picture to detail the changes in his nemesis since high school. The gun had been tucked away in his duffel bag in the car since his arrival, a reassuring presence of which he kept an image of in his mind. He only planned to use it as leverage, not to actually shoot anyone; to speak in a language that Brody could understand.

If Brody came, he had always visualized him alone, not with a companion. And he couldn’t be sure that the smaller man was in fact Brody Stape. He seemed about the right size, but leaner, and the lines and hair on his face effectively disguising any trace of the boy he had known, if the word boy had ever applied to him, a creature of another class entirely. In the movie that played in his head, Brody drove right up to their campsite, got out of a car, and asked directly if one of them had left the note in his mailbox. He hadn’t considered anything like this. He watched for Jon's reaction, waited for him to ask in a strained voice if the guy reminded him of someone, but either Jon did not recognize him, or chose not to.

Will waited, his gut a cauldron of anxiety, and when the man had come over to confront them, the ridiculous bit about their laughing, he looked hard for Brody Stape, but the firelight revealed so little. And then, when they had moved their motorcycles he wanted to shout out Brody's name. But he kept silent. Brody didn’t have a corner on harassing others, wasn’t the only one that got his kicks from preying on the weak, and they might have just run into these guys coincidentally while waiting for the bully with the invite to show up. And if it wasn’t Brody, he didn’t want to reveal his plan to Jon and have to explain. So Will hardened his resolve, refused to be chased away or drawn in, determined not to be the first to reveal himself or be run off by thugs no matter who they were.

To flee would be his final undoing.

When he had offered the Pop-Tarts, he believed recognition and confrontation inevitable; that up close, in the daylight, either he or Brody would blink, or he would realize it was not Brody at all. The hidden gun had given him courage to play this game, happy for any courage mustered by any means.

When the bikers had left, they had left him convinced that he dealt with two entirely different people that knew nothing of him and Jon, and this both unsettled and angered him, that they were apparently natural targets for the cruel amusement of others. And he had to admit the relief he felt to himself. Maybe he would send Brody another note. Maybe there was another way to approach this. Maybe he should just leave it alone. He hadn't run, and maybe that was enough.

And then they had returned, and brought in the Amish kid, and the game changed. Now, with Chris dead, Stape revealed, and the gun and control of the situation entirely gone from his hands, Will fought hard to hold back tears of frustration and anger, barely registering as Jon, with the casual manner of a man casting stones into a pond, threw the rock.

Will was mistaken; there had been someone at home. Brody had fallen asleep on his worn couch, on top of a blanket thrown over the threadbare cushions to hide the stains and holes. The impact of the first rock had woken him up, and he remained motionless inside the dark home, his senses piqued, waiting for another sound, ready to move. He had learned to sleep lightly in prison, never sure if he had really slept at all there, every scrape or muffled footfall carrying with it the potential of violence and death.

At the second noise, Brody had rolled from the couch to the floor, determining that it had come from outside, towards the front of the house. He pulled his pistol out from under a couch cushion and crept low to the window, staying below the frame to avoid presenting a target.