Blind Fall (15 page)

John would have preferred to hear madness in his voice, but instead Alex’s voice was cool and controlled, like someone in shell shock. “I’m sorry I broke your nose,” John said.

“I’m not, John. You want to know why? Because you showed me just who the fuck you are.”

“And who’s that?”

“A white-trash closet-case piece of shit, John,” Alex snarled.

“You wouldn’t have accepted Mike, because you wanted to fuck his pretty ass, and that just wasn’t okay with you. Because you were too busy trying to be a real man. A real man who fell down on the job and put his entire team in danger. A real man who walked out on his sister ten years ago—”

John tore his hand free of Alex’s grip and took off, making a hard left so it would be harder for Alex to aim at him. He didn’t run because the accusations were true; he ran because he knew full well that if Alex had managed to convince himself of these lies, then he might well be capable of any kind of violence he could dream up. Just as he reached up for the hood with his left hand, his right side impacted with a tree trunk, and his entire world caught fire. Maybe if he hadn’t been blinded, he wouldn’t have seen the stars that strobed his vision in such brilliant Technicolor. They were the only things to distract from the exquisite agony of the impact. He had no sense of up or down, just a vague sense that his knees had come to rest on broken twigs. He retched, thought he was going to vomit, then coughed up a phlegm ball, which smeared his lips.

For what felt like an eternity, he rocked back and forth, as if it would help the pain to subside. Then, when he had managed to steady his breathing, he felt the gun barrel brush against the back of his head, and in a clear and controlled voice Alex said, “Did you ever stop to ask yourself why I never suspected you, John? Did you ever wonder why I didn’t think you killed him? After all, you were the only one who ever got to be alone with him after he was dead. Maybe chasing me out into the woods the way you did was some big cover.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“How? How do I know that, John?”

“Because when I caught up with you, I would have killed you.”

“No, John. I don’t know anything about you anymore. Up until yesterday I thought you were just a sad sack of shit trying to do right by me. But you showed what you really wanted.”

“What’s that?”

Alex’s voice blasted right into his ear. “You wanted to punish me, didn’t you, John? You wanted to show me what it takes to be a real man like you. Problem is, John, you’re
not
a real man. Maybe I’m not, either. But the least I can do is show you what it takes to be like me. And don’t try to fool me into thinking you’re tough enough for whatever I throw at you. I know you left the Marines before you went through SERE.”

SERE stood for “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” an immersive, demoralizing training program Recon Marines went through to teach them how to survive in enemy captivity. In a simulated environment, trainees were given a false piece of intelligence they were required to keep secret; then they were taken hostage and subjected to days of psychological torture designed to toughen them to the degree that they could stand up to anything short of having their fingers cut off. John had never been able to get a single SERE graduate to tell him the extent of what they had been put through, not even Mike. Sure, he’d heard the same stories everyone had heard. Trainees being forced to piss in their waterproof boots and wear them for days on end. White captives being forced to wear Klansman hoods and drag their fellow black captives around on leashes. But these stories had the smell of urban legends, and the avowed secrecy of almost everyone who went through the program hinted at even darker experiences. Had Mike shared some of these with Alex? Was that why Alex was bringing it up, because he was about to use some of them?

Alex said, “You were supposed to, though. But you pussed out and left the Marine Corps because you almost got your captain killed.”

“You need to cut this out,” John heard himself say, and the tremor of genuine fear in his voice turned his stomach. “You need to cut this shit out right now.”

Instead, Alex drove the gun barrel up under John’s chin, and the sound that came out of John was mostly a roar, but there was a word in it: his sister’s first name. As if on cue, John felt the hood get ripped up over his mouth, and suddenly he was chewing some kind of fabric. From the shape it took once Alex shoved it inside his mouth, John assumed it was a sock.

Alex lifted him to his feet by the back of his neck and said, “Listen to every word I say to you.
See
what I tell you to see.”

Alex shoved him forward. The temperature dropped suddenly, and even though he was hooded, he thought he could feel a deep darkness on his skin.

They were standing on a dirt floor, and there were loose rocks underfoot. John was willing to bet it was some kind of cave. A small one, though, because when Alex started to speak again, his voice didn’t echo.

“Eighteen, John. You remember eighteen?” To avoid choking on his gag, he nodded in response. “You were eighteen when you joined the Marine Corps, right? Ran away from home because you wanted to be some big hero?”

Again he nodded. Alex’s instructions had been to visualize every word he said to him, so John did. Saw himself standing outside the Marine Corps recruiting depot in San Diego, felt the shaking in his legs as he and his buddy Clyde Travis paused for the first time in several hours to absorb the full impact of what they were about to do. They had hitched a ride down from Yucca Valley with a tattooed, cigarette-swallowing former gunnery sergeant who had been more than happy to ferry two willing new recruits to their new home. Only when they reached the threshold to their new life did John wonder if they were making a mistake. He said so to Clyde, who had called him a pussy, which was funny now, considering that Clyde had washed out in the second week of boot camp and ended up managing an AutoZone.

“Imagine you’ve had a secret your entire life, but you know that if you drive to this little bar all the way across town, you’ll find someone you can tell it to. You’ll be able to get it off your chest once and for all, and chances are they won’t judge you or call you names…” Alex trailed off, as if the power of the memory he was referring to in the most general of terms had overtaken him.

“You’re eighteen,” he said, then swallowed before he continued. “You’re eighteen and you’ve just gone away to school. You’re finally free from your parents, who would probably slam the door in your face and keep it shut for the rest of your life if they knew this little
secret
you had.”

Alex turned him around, pressed down on his good shoulder, and John felt his ass come to rest on a wooden chair. Alex retreated slightly; then John felt strands of rope being wrapped around his stomach, the same rope he had asked Patsy to buy for one of their upcoming endurance challenges.

All of his plans to train Alex seemed absurd and haphazard now, and he had to fight the urge to laugh at his own stupidity, his arrogance. Although, if either quality could get him out of this fucker of a situation, he would have welcomed them both back with open arms. It was clear to him now that all he had managed to do to Alex so far was blow the top off the well of grief and anger inside him.

“You’re gay, John. Even though you’ve never laid a hand on another man in your life, you know damn well you’re a full-on cock-sucking fairy. Are you working with me here? Are you seeing this?” When John didn’t answer Alex asked, “Are you
feeling
this?”

He felt the final tugs as Alex tied the knots that secured John to the chair and nodded as deeply as he could. “I’m telling a story, John. That’s all. I’m telling you a story so you can understand. Isn’t that what you want, John? To
understand
your good buddy Mike? To understand the things men like him go through?”

Liar,
he thought. This was a story about Alex, eighteen and visiting his first gay bar, and he was pretty sure it was a story that ended in violence, which John had stupidly brought to the surface the minute he broke Alex’s nose.

“You’re eighteen, John. You’ve barely been at college a few weeks, barely have any real friends, so it’s easy for you to slip out every night and drive clear across town to this little gay bar in the middle of nowhere. See, you’ve checked out the bigger clubs, but they’re too much. Your fake ID worked but there’s too much of everything there—too much sex, too much music, too many drugs. You need a quiet place where you can find someone who will listen, someone who will make you feel less like a
mistake
in a universe intended for assholes and Marines.”

Footsteps. The sound of something metal clinking on a table. John fought images of knives and pliers, realized he had heard nothing more dangerous than the pop of a bottle cap. An open beer bottle was passed under his nose, and it amazed him how a smell that had previously made his mouth water could be turned into a stench by cold darkness and a coil of rope.

“So, you park across the street and you watch the men who go inside and you’re kind of amazed because not all of them look like the pathetic faggots you’ve seen in movies or on TV. They’re not dressed up like women and they’re not wearing tube tops and feather boas and all kinds of sissy shit.” In recounting the story, Alex’s voice had taken on a clipped masculine tone, as if he were speaking in the voice of his former self, the young man he had been before the story he was telling came to an end.

“And you wait, and you wait, and you wait for the courage to go inside that bar, but it doesn’t come. Not the first night. Even though you sit there downing a bunch of beers you bought with your fake ID. So you go back to your dorm, lie to your roommate about where you’ve been, and lay up all night planning what you’re going to do when you go back. It takes you two weeks. Two weeks of sitting in your car drinking beer before you finally step out and cross that street, flash your fake ID to the guy with the mustache who’s working the front door. Then you’re inside and you see some pool tables and a long bar. No sex club. No guys in assless chaps. Nothing like you’ve been told. Nothing like you’ve been taught to fear.

“And the men inside. They look like
men,
and some of them are smiling at you. Sure, the rest are looking at you in a way you’re not used to having other men look at you. But a couple of guys, they come over and say hi, but they can see how drunk you are and mostly they’re just welcoming you to the place, because they were you once and they know how many beers it took you to come inside, and this isn’t like those big dance clubs. This is one of those bars where people try to take care of their own.”

From the sound of his voice, John could tell that Alex was retreating, walking back over to the table where he had opened the beer bottle. He could see where this was headed and he dreaded what props Alex had selected to help him imagine the ending of this tale. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He swallowed and found his mouth was dry.

“A few of them offer to give you a ride home because they can see how drunk you are, but you refuse because you’re not ready for them to know your last name or where you go to school. You try to walk as straight a line as you can out the door. And then you see him. He’s waiting for you right next to your truck. Handsome. Tall. Blond hair, blue eyes, and a smile that lights up the street. Later, when you look back, you’ll remember that he was standing in the shadows, just outside the halo of the streetlight, and you’ll realize the cowboy hat wasn’t just a prop—it was supposed to hide his face. But for now he’s the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and when he asks you if you want to take a ride in his truck, you know there isn’t really a choice for you. That you’ve turned down too many opportunities, ignored too many promising looks—there’s no way you can dismiss this man, and you’re just drunk enough to think he might be the last one you’ll ever need to meet.

“And then he curves his arm around your back and starts walking you away from your car, and just the feel of his arm around your back—well, it’s like your destiny has finally reached out to you and told you which way to go.”

John felt something whip through the air in front of his face, followed by a crash that lashed the hood with broken glass and enough beer to soak clean through it until he tasted Budweiser on his lips. Alex had clearly smashed the beer bottle against some hard surface, probably a pot or a pan he was holding right next to John’s head.

“The pain’s too great at first for you to feel it, and for a second, you think the bottle just came down from the sky and hit you in the head. And then—”

John was rocked backward, then pitched forward, crying out in pain as his arm was jostled and the chair was dragged along the dirt floor with John canted forward at a forty-five-degree angle. “Then, suddenly, the guy’s dragging you into an alley and you see other guys waiting for you. And you
know
instantly what it means. You know you’re being punished by God, by your parents, by everyone you have ever met, everyone who ever knew your secret. Because all you wanted was to feel less alone. All you wanted was to have them smile at who you actually were.”

The chair stopped but it was still pitched forward, and John had no choice but to throw his good arm out and brace it against the dirt.

Something exploded just over John’s head. Alex was striking a hard surface several feet above the chair, probably the wall of the cave. Again and again Alex struck the stone wall until John felt chips of rock lacing his exposed neck. The worst of the sound was centered in the pipe and not the rock, a resounding clang each time it made contact with the wall.

“Is this you, John?’ Alex cried. “Could you have done this?”

The banging stopped, leaving John’s ears ringing. Then beer splashed down John’s back as Alex emptied one bottle over the back of his head, then another. It poured under the hood and into his mouth, soaking through the sock stuffed in his mouth and into the back of his throat.

“Only it’s not beer, John. See, the pipe isn’t enough for them. The beating—well, that was just meant to bring you to your knees. Now, they need to show you how they really feel about you.”

John coughed despite himself, and the beer-soaked sock came halfway out of his mouth. Alex finished emptying the last beer bottle over the back of John’s hood; then John heard the sound of the empty bottle hitting the cave floor and rolling. He coughed again, and the sock came out enough for him to spit it out all the way.

“No!” he managed between coughs. “I never would have done that to you or to any man.”

Alex lowered the chair down onto all four legs and turned it. When he ripped John’s hood off, John blinked, allowing beer to get in his eyes. When Alex started using the empty hood to wipe his face clean, John grimaced and turned away, then relented. Once his vision had returned, he saw they were indeed inside a small cave and there was an electric lantern sitting right next to the opening, turning Alex into a backlit silhouette.

“I never would have done that to you,” he said.

“Not me,” Alex said. “Mike. They did it to
Mike.
”

He tried to take in this new information at the same time he tried to catch his breath, but he couldn’t swallow it: the thought of Captain Mike Bowers being beaten and pissed on in an alleyway at age eighteen. How could the Mike he had known have emerged from that experience to be a man of impeccable skill and laserlike focus? Sure, John could see someone surviving that kind of beating and going on to become a Marine but the kind of deranged, suicidal Marine who plows his Humvee right into enemy fire while shouting a dirty version of his favorite country song at the top of his lungs. He couldn’t see that person becoming Lightning Mike Bowers.

“You don’t believe me?” Alex finally said.

“What does it matter?” John whispered. “What does it matter what I say to you or do for you? You think I live to hate you, and nothing’s going to change your mind, so fuck it.”

“Oh, please, John. Don’t act like you’re out to prove something to
me.
Don’t act like you’re trying to accept me, to accept who I am. That’s a load of bullshit. The reason you think you’re so damn heroic is that you hate my guts and you’re doing all this anyway.”

“Maybe so. But who says that has anything to do with the fact that you’re gay?”

Alex barked with laughter for a few seconds; then he stopped himself just as his laughs started to sound crazed and desperate. “The question is, can I accept
you,
John? Can I accept the fact that you need to pretend to be a hero because something bad happened to your little brother? Something that might have made you turn your back on the man who saved your life, if he’d lived long enough for you to find out who he really was?” John didn’t have the energy to deny this, probably because he knew it to be the truth, so he allowed Alex to continue. “What did you call yourself last night? My whipping boy? Maybe. But what am I to you, John?”

When John didn’t answer, Alex closed the distance between them, bent down until their faces were almost level. “I think the only reason you signed on for this is because as long as you have me to hate, you don’t have to really accept the fact that Mike
chose
me to live with him, to love him, and to fuck him. It’s Mike you’re angry at, isn’t it?”

“What does it matter? Next to yours, my anger looks like a light fucking rain.”

Alex smiled, but it was more like a grimace. Then, quickly, as if it were meant to be a sneak attack, he said, “What happened to your brother, John?”

“The reason you can’t understand why I would agree to help you is because you are too cynical and too…
indulged
to even begin to understand the principles, the values, that I lived by. That Mike lived by. We were—”

“What happened to your brother, John?”

“I don’t do things because of how they’ll make me
feel.
Because of how they’ll—”

“
What happened to your brother?
” Alex roared, face cherry red, veins pulsing in his temple. Maybe it was a device, because something about the seeming insanity of Alex’s sudden anger made John relax, as if nothing he might say could make things any worse.

“He was raped,” John said quietly. “By a man who lived in our street. A friend of his. Danny Oster. Oster went to Mexico for a while after I almost beat him to death. But now he’s back and he’s changed his name to Charles Keaton and he’s living in beautiful Redlands, California, where I guess he’s about to find some other confused, emotional kid just like my brother and try to get him alone, when his parents, or his brother, or whoever’s supposed to be watching him is somewhere else.”

Alex withdrew, his brow furrowed and his breaths slowing. “How do you know he raped your brother?”