Son of Destruction (26 page)

There are things about Walker that nobody needs to know. That he struggles to keep hidden.

‘It’s OK,’ Walker said. ‘You can stop now.’
Please.

‘I was so wasted.’ Chaplin was bent on laying down his burden. At the end he looked relieved, like a Catholic coming out of Confession. As if he’d finally shaken off whatever sat on his head – monstrous, leaden. ‘Please try to understand.’

Grieved as he was, shaken and suffering, Walker overrode it. He stood, and Chaplin stood. Surprised, Walker found himself raising the blade of his right hand – not as weapon and not in warning, but as though to bless the man before he released him.

‘OK then.’ Then he let him go.

‘Oh, thank you.’ On the porch, Chaplain cried, ‘
I’m so sorry
.’

‘Don’t.’

It saddens him to think that men like Chaplin actually believe that there are things you can get off your back by confessing them, as though destiny is fair and open-handed. That he can get past what he did by giving it a name.

The poor sod believes there is in life an identifiable moment at which, when
for good reason
, everything goes bad.

Well, Walker is here to tell you that’s a crock of shit. Whatever is wrong within Walker Pike has been burning in there since the day he tumbled into the world, hopeful and unaware.

What happened with the old lady was inevitable.

He knows what he is and he fears it. The potential staggers him.

I’ve always been this way.

Knowing circumscribes his life in ways he freely acknowledges and does not resent. Walker is a solitary. He lives alone and walks shy of others’ lives. He stays out of their houses because it is important – not to keep his secret, but to keep them safe.

Please God, the kid will stay safe in his bed inside the Flordana tonight.

But when the last sirens die, just as the first EMS van comes back up on Central Avenue, he sees young Carteret come barreling out of the Flordana. Some kind of reporter, Bob Chaplin told him. Of course he chases fires, but the damn thing must be out by now. With a groan, Walker kicks his car into gear and coasts downhill as Carteret runs for the garage. He keeps the motor running while the kid goes inside. When the grate comes up and the rented car rolls out Walker falls in behind, gliding along behind.

He is here to follow, not stalk, Dan Carteret. He keeps pace, thinking as long as he stays in the shadows and keeps his distance, they’ll both be safe.

There is this with the kid, but there’s more.

If they see him, he may be blamed.

He goes over the bridge and along Coral Boulevard with his lights off, turning into a side street when the kid turns, parking at the corner so he won’t know. Out in the circle, people he knows by sight are kicking at the embers of Boyd Till’s pretentious, ruined house. He can smell the size and scope of the fire. Walker wants to see, he isn’t here to see, he is here to protect Dan Carteret, although he does not know why and could not say from what, exactly.

Much as he’d like to walk up to this decent, attractive kid who looks like him, much as he wants to clamp Carteret’s skull in his hands and pull him close, look in the eyes and see into his soul so he can confirm the likeness; much as Walker wants to grip the kid’s hands and sense the truth of him, he’ll keep a safe distance, and he must never, ever identify himself or tell Dan that he loves him, and he does. He may want to let his son know him and know everything about him, but the burden of knowledge that Walker Pike carries and has carried all these years must, at all costs, be contained.

It’s for Dan’s protection.

This is why he stays put when the kid finally comes back to his car – and not alone, which is a surprise. Dan comes back to the car with a woman Walker recognizes. That he knew, but not really, no big thing.

Keeping his charge’s tail-lights in sight, Walker follows the rented Honda to the house where Nenna Henderson – no, McCall – seems to live; he pulls past the Honda and stops in the shadow of the jacarandas two doors beyond Nenna’s house. He tilts his mirror, watching as Dan follows her inside.

When his son leaves here, Walker needs to see that he makes it safely to the next place. For reasons not altogether clear, he’ll wait here for as long as it takes, wondering what’s going on behind the Florentine façade and whether the sun will come up on the new day before he gets through doing whatever he’s doing in there, and comes back to his car.

Dan
, he thinks. He lets the word out. ‘Dan.’

‘Why am I here?’

Poor lady, she looks tired now that they are in the light, uncertain and wounded by Dan’s tone, does she have any idea how late it is? Did she expect him to thank her for yanking him out of a stone sleep to chase a dead fire? After which she scammed him into this ride home, getting into his car on the strength of information that she shows no sign of delivering; you bet he’s pissed.

She says lamely, ‘I thought you were into fires.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Everybody knows.’

His eyebrows shoot up.

‘After all, you told Jessie. You’re not in Los Angeles with a billion strangers, this is Fort Jude.’ She’s maneuvered him into a chair in the French Provincial living room – one of those orderly, hushed places where no people come. Cold, like a decorator’s model room. ‘Davis won’t be back tonight.’

‘Ma’am . . .’

‘Don’t.’

‘I have stuff to do.’

‘We won’t bother Steffy, she’s over at Jen Pritchard’s.’

Oh, lady. Don’t smile at me like that.
‘It’s late.’

‘It isn’t late, it’s early.’ Mrs Um, Nenna will say anything to keep him, lilting, ‘So. Talk about your suspicious fires. Want to hear what they’re saying about Boyd Till?’

‘I’d rather hear about my mother – whatever you know.’

‘They’re saying some bike buddy of Boyd’s set it, you know Boyd goes around in Carole’s evening dresses when she isn’t . . . Oh, please don’t look at me like that!’

‘Look, you said . . .’

‘I know what I said. I had to tell you something.’

And don’t scrunch up your face like bubble wrap, it’s disfiguring. And would you stop sighing?
‘If you don’t have anything . . .’

She blurts, ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come!’ Everything is sliding around now. Her face, her stated reason for this encounter.

‘. . . I’ll just go.’

‘I couldn’t bear to get back in that car with Davis. Not with everybody knowing. Not after I kicked him out for good.’

‘Right.’

He can leave, but he can’t stop her from following him to the door with that sweet, frenzied smile. ‘This is a really hard time for me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. If you want the whole truth, I just wanted to show Davis.’

‘Show him what?’

‘That I have friends!’ She grabs his arm. ‘Was that so terrible of me?’

Pressed, Dan bares his teeth. As a smile, it sucks, but at five a.m. it’s the best he can do – a rictus to get out the door on.

But she goes all life-or-death on him. ‘Wait! Ugh.’ Nenna groans. Something inside her is struggling to the surface. ‘Agh. This is hard. I . . .’

Shit. He has to stay until she coughs it up.

Finally she blurts, ‘I had to show them all I’m still attractive. Is that so terrible?’

‘You don’t have anything on Lucy, do you.’
Say no, so this night can end
.

‘No.’

‘OK then.’

‘I mean. No, I do!’

Now it’s his turn to groan. There is no way of seeing into urgent, worn-out Nenna, no telling what she has stored up for him. To find out, Dan has to follow her back into that Louis-Whatever parlor, sit down and wait.

‘Coffee?’

‘No.’ He sits, but does not speak: an interviewing tactic he learned on the job. Let silence do its work.

‘I should have told you yesterday,’ she says, ‘but it’s hard. We never talked about it at the time and we didn’t talk about it afterward and we don’t talk about it now because you don’t in Fort Jude, especially since nobody’s sure what went down and it would ruin one of us. Am I making any sense?’

Looking into his hands, he waits.

‘See, certain things are best forgotten. Everybody has something to live down and we respect that, aren’t we all here to help each other through?’

They sit until the period clock on the marble mantel strikes again.

‘When you get mixed up in something shameful in Fort Jude you’ll shoot yourself dead before you let on, because your nearest and dearest will badger you until the story comes out – and when it does, you are implicated. Tarred with the same brush, you just are. We think your mother was . . .’ She blushes. ‘Well . . . A thing like that can toxify your life. You don’t talk about it with your best friend, you don’t even whisper it to your lover, you wouldn’t dare because we are all connected. Tell
one single human being
and they all know. You have to protect yourself!’

Oh fuck
, he thinks.
Talking in circles
.

‘What if people found out that was you, laid out drooling by the bonfire when it happened, squealing drunk with a bunch of boys so out of control that there was no telling what they’d do? What if people knew you were so loaded that you don’t even remember what you stooped to or with who, what would everybody think of you then?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘What if they started asking why didn’t you stop them?’ All her breath comes out in a sob. ‘Understand, when these things happen, they always blame the girl.’

‘What things?’

‘Like it’s all your fault,’ she says bitterly, ‘for being jealous of her and so wasted that you didn’t lift a hand. You didn’t
make
it happen but you let it happen. Do you know what that’s like?’

He needs his digital recorder. The tangle of words is unraveling too fast, with loose ends everywhere.

‘I mean, look at poor Jessie. It took her years to live down all the things she did with all those boys, because everybody knew. She had to make all those donations, drive all those miles for Meals on Wheels to . . . What do I want to say here? Atone for whatever she did with those boys. And she enjoyed it!’ Frowning, she corrects. ‘Or what we think she did.’

A bad wind blows in out of nowhere. ‘At least I’m not the only one.’

‘The only one what?’
Shut up, Carteret. Just let her do this
.

‘The only one they blame for letting Lucy go off with them,’ she says impatiently.

‘Off with who?’

‘If our folks knew their girls were laid out on the sand with their knees up just like Jessie Vukovich . . . Oh, that sounds terrible, but this is Fort Jude.’ Another long, time-sucking sigh. ‘Around here we drag our pasts around like Marley’s ghost, because whatever you do, if even one person finds out, everybody knows it. You’d have to move to Alaska to escape it! In Fort Jude people forgive, God knows we all do it every single day, but nobody ever, ever forgets,’ she says.

She says, ‘And if you’re a slut, that’s what everybody thinks of you.’

‘You’re saying my mother was a slut?’

‘Hardly.’ Something ugly breaks the surface. ‘She thought she was too good for us!’

The thing about period clocks is the pendulum. Every fucking tick.

Nervously, she zips and unzips the hoodie she threw on to go out tonight. Color keyed to the silk tank top, what was she thinking? Was she dressing for him? ‘Oh this is embarrassing. Girls like us, no matter what we did back then or where we did it or who we did it with, the day we get married we’re all virgins again.’ She rocks with anger. ‘Because it’s expected! If nobody finds out, it just – un-happens. It has to. Am I making any sense?’

‘Not really.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m sure up north things are a lot freer, but this is a small town locked up inside a big city and down here everybody minds everybody else’s business – that is, everybody that matters.’ She fixes him with her eyes. ‘It’s how we keep each other safe.’

He lies politely; anything to keep her going. ‘I see.’

‘We keep quiet.’ She spreads her fingers in apology. ‘It’s what we do, and I’m sorry. If the truth came out, it would ruin more lives than just Lucy Carteret’s. So I hope you understand, and I’m sorry.’

He doesn’t. He wants to pick this woman up by her hoodie and batter her with questions but he has to wait until her head comes back from wherever it’s wandered off to. It takes longer than it should.

‘OK,’ she says finally. ‘So what I wanted to tell you was, it got way too late that night; there were at hundreds of us there, everybody that mattered and all their friends, all the team captains, cheerleaders, prom queens and the whole May Court except, of course, for Lucy because she was beautiful but she was never one of us, which is why . . .’

He leans forward to catch what comes next.

Instead she takes him on a detour. ‘It’s like Lucy was above us all even in first grade, birthday parties in the club ballroom and we had to dress up for old Lorna’s little princess, unless . . .’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless she was her prisoner! Then Lucy’s dad died up in Charleston and she came into some money. All those years trapped in the tower. She bought a convertible! Came down on the beach at the tag end of houseparties, amazing body and her hair was perfect. It just was too much. We hated her. I’m sorry, that’s the way it was, like, if it had happened to another girl, we might have—’

‘What?’

‘Warned her off!’ Is she drunk or just used up? The girlish way Nenna rearranges her breasts inside the tight tank top makes clear that she’d have sex with him to keep from having to explain. ‘I must look awful.’

‘You look fine.’

‘I don’t, but thanks.’
Oh, lady, don’t sigh!
‘Sometimes I wonder how it would have come down if we’d been friends. But she was not like us!’

‘You said that.’

‘God knows what her problem was.’

Carefully, he leads her back into the interview, asking little, giving nothing – no hint of an agenda, framing a question from what he knows. ‘Shy?’

‘Like, we were never close. I don’t know if she was shy or just too good for us. She just didn’t
do
like we do. She lived in her own little world, and maybe if she’d stayed there, she wouldn’t have . . . And the saddest thing?’ Her face is all messed up.