The Brave (31 page)

The appeal took the best part of a year to come to court. And during that time there was barely a night that Tom didn't have some terrible dream about what was going to happen. Strangely, it was he who was usually the victim. He was in the gas chamber himself, strapped into a chair while curls of smoke swirled around his ankles and then his knees and hips and then his chest and then he would wake up screaming and Cal would be there and hold him and lie with him until he slept again.

And every Wednesday afternoon, they would drive out together to the prison. Tommy dreaded every visit. Diane was always so brave and funny and full of hope, as if the whole thing were some great misunderstanding that would soon be cleared up. One day, while he sat with Cal in the waiting room, a brown-colored bird flew in through one of the high barred windows. There were four big fans suspended from the ceiling and everyone in the room watched as it fluttered perilously around them. Then one of the guards found a net on a long pole and tried to catch it but all he eventually managed to do was drive the poor creature into one of the fans and it fell dead in a flurry of feathers to the floor.

The appeal was turned down and the date set for Diane's execution. Tom could remember every moment of that last visit. The clanking and the voices echoing along the corridors; how he had followed the fat guard through all those doors and gates; the sight of Diane standing smiling at him in the sunlit cell when the other guard opened the door. And all he had felt was a seething anger that life should be so.

After their time was up, he had to sit in the waiting room again while Cal went to say goodbye to her. When he came back, Tom stood up and Cal put his arm around his shoulders and they walked out of the cell block and out into the warm evening air toward the parking lot. There was a huge Stars and Stripes above the prison, undulating in the last of the sunlight. Tom stared at it all the way to the car and even as they drove away he couldn't take his eyes off it, as if it somehow had the power to stop what was happening.

Two days later, Diane went to the gas chamber.

DANNY DIDN'T ASK him anything that night. They sat in silence for a long time until a riffle of wind stirred and sparked the embers of the fire. Tom could see in the boy's eyes that he was shocked and moved by the story of what had happened to his grandmother. Whether it would help lighten the burden of his own guilt about the lives he had taken, Tom couldn't tell. Probably not. Only the passing of the years could do that.

The following day as they drove back to Missoula, Danny asked if Gina knew about what had happened to Diane, and Tom said that all he'd ever disclosed was that his "sister" had been killed in a car crash when he was thirteen. He said he would tell her, if Danny thought it was a good idea. Danny said he thought it was. He went on to ask a lot of questions about Cal who had died of a sudden heart attack in the same year Danny was born. Gina and Cal had never met. Danny got Tom talking about his teenage years in Choteau, how happy they were and how they probably saved him from being sent off to some reform school or funny farm. He said it as a joke, but it was true.

"What about Cal's parents?"

"John died in the early seventies, two years after I went to UM. Rose lived another five. She wasn't too good after he'd gone. She had what I guess you'd nowadays call Alzheimer's. In the end Cal had to put her in a home."

"You must have missed him a lot. Cal, I mean."

"Yeah. He was a great guy. Closest thing to a father that I ever had. I still miss him."

Whatever else, if anything, Tom's campfire confession might have done for Danny, it seemed to kindle an interest in his family's history. He went in search of the movies Diane had been in. The two she had made in Britain had never made it to video. But about a year later, on some obscure website, Danny managed to find The Forsaken. He phoned Tom to tell him and, a little nervously, asked if he wanted to watch it. Tom hesitated for a long time and finally said that if Danny mailed it to him, maybe he'd take a look.

"The movie's not great," Danny said. "But, wow, she's sensational. She is so beautiful. And he's such a dork! I dug up some old episodes of Sliprock too and... Sorry, Dad. I probably shouldn't have said that."

The DVD sat on Tom's desk for most of a month before he found the courage to watch it. It was a lousy copy. The picture was all fuzzy and streaked. Someone had no doubt sneaked a dusty old print one night from the vaults. But Danny was right. Diane was stunning. And after he was over the shock of seeing her and hearing her voice, he was captivated. He had imagined that watching the man he had killed would reactivate all sorts of dark emotions, but it didn't. Perhaps that was because he had lifted the lid on the past and told Danny. Or perhaps it was simply because the movie was so bad. More than bad. It was truly, magnificently, dreadful. Ray's performance was hilarious, almost as hilarious as poor old Terry Redfield's attempts to edit him out of the picture.

When he told Gina about Diane, she was devastated. Not so much by the story itself, but by the fact that Tom had never felt able to tell her. She cried and hugged him and kept saying if only she'd known. If only. Tom didn't ask her to follow through with the thought. Would it really have changed things between them, had she known the truth? He doubted it. Unless, of course, its very disclosure had helped him change too. He now realized how corrosive it had been for him to keep the secret for all those years. More than corrosive. Secrets such as his were like some sort of malign living organism. They thrived on shame and guilt, spawning a fear that gnawed away at your insides. Now, by contrast, for the first time in his life, Tom felt a kind of peace descend upon him.

It seemed to be the same for Danny. Tom couldn't be sure because for many months after their joint confessional, they didn't talk about it. Danny moved with Kelly and young Thomas to Bozeman to begin his studies at Montana State. A few months later, Kelly gave birth to identical twin girls, Rebecca and Diane. Once a month Tom would drive down to see them or they would all come up to Missoula for the weekend.

He bought Danny a new fly rod and reel and one sultry June evening they headed over to fish the Yellowstone. They watched the sky turn pink and orange and the flies dance in smoky clusters over the water. There were trout rising everywhere but neither one of them got lucky. In the end they stowed their rods and sat on the bank staring at the sky's reflection in the water.

"Do you remember that canoe trip when we turned over?" Danny said.

"How could I ever forget?"

"You know, for years I felt bad about it, like it was my fault."

"Your fault?"

"Yeah, that if I'd been better with the paddle or more alert or something, we wouldn't have gone over."

"You weren't even five years old, for heaven's sake."

"I know, but I just sat there like an idiot and watched it happen."

"Man, I can still see every moment of it."

"Me too."

"The thing that knocked me out, still knocks me out, is when you bobbed up to the surface, the first thing you said was 'Daddy, are you all right?' "

"You just looked so worried."

"I thought you were gone."

Neither of them spoke for a while. The light was purple and thickening, the mountaintops to the east aglow with the last of the sun.

"That was pretty much the end of things between you and Mom, wasn't it?"

"Yep. She put up with it for a few more years. Stayed a lot longer than I deserved. She's a great woman, your mom. I count myself lucky to have had those years with her."

"She said the other day how good it was to see you happy at last."

"Did she? Well, it's true. I am."

He smiled and put an arm around his son.

"I'd be a whole lot happier, mind you, if we'd caught one of those damned fish."

The subject embarrassed him a little. He wore his happiness like new shoes that were still a little stiff but would be fine when they were broken in. He didn't even really want to think about it. In case it took fright and flew off.

For almost a year now he had been spending a lot of time with Karen O'Keefe's mother, Lois. It was she who'd made the first move, rightly guessing that if she left it up to him nothing would ever happen. There was a film festival on in town and one of the organizers, a friend of hers, had given her a free pass to everything. They went to see Pierrot le Fou, a movie they had both loved when they were in college. It was so terrible they left after the first hour and laughed about it all the way through dinner.

"How on earth could we ever have liked that?" Tom said. "I mean, is it that we've changed or the world has changed?"

"I guess we like all kinds of things when we're young. I mean, look at old photographs, look at what we wore back then, things we wouldn't be seen dead in today. I remember I had this black-and-white op art dress. It was backless with a halter neck and a zipper all the way up the front."

"I could live with that."

She laughed.

"Know what I had?" Tom said.

"Go on, shock me."

"A psychedelic, flare-bottomed catsuit."

"You did not!"

"And an Afro."

"You're kidding."

"I am. But I was pretty cutting-edge, as a matter of fact."

"I bet you were."

One Saturday afternoon in Missoula, shortly after the twins were born, Tom bumped into Karen. He knew from her mother that she had been traveling a lot, promoting her movie Walking Wounded. It had been winning awards at film festivals all over Europe. American audiences didn't seem to like it so much. She and Tom had never gotten any further with their film about the Holy Family Mission. Nor, come to that, with their relationship.

She was waiting outside Fact & Fiction licking an ice cream cone and when she saw Tom she flung her arms around him and made a big fuss. They stood chatting for a while, then who should come out of the store but Troop. He put a possessive arm around her and kissed her and it was all Tom could do not to fall over in shock.

"I hear you and Mom have been seeing a lot of each other," she said.

"Yes, that's right. We have."

"Don't be so coy. She says she may even be moving in."

"Well, you know, we thought we might give it a go." Tom could feel himself blushing. "But you two! I had no idea."

"Oh." Troop grinned. "We're just good friends."

"Strictly business," Karen said, cuddling into him.

"Don't tell me. You're making a movie together."

"How did you know?"

"Just guessing. I can't believe Lois never told me about this."

Karen put her finger to her lips.

"She doesn't know."

"Your secret's safe with me." He looked at his watch. "For about twenty minutes, anyhow."

By the end of the following month Lois had more or less moved in. There wasn't a moment when it was decided or even a discussion, just a gradual realization that living together worked and was what they both wanted. They made each other laugh and once he'd grown used to having someone else around all the time, everything, in every department, felt right and good. It seemed like the first adult relationship he'd ever had.

On July Fourth of that same year, just after Danny's graduation from Montana State, they held a lunch party for their new extended family. Dutch and Gina came over from Great Falls, Karen and Troop flew up from LA and Danny and Kelly drove up with the three grandchildren from Bozeman. Tom and Danny manned the barbecue and Lois and Gina bonded big-time over the salads.

The weather was clear and hot and Tom had mowed the grass so the air smelled sweetly of summer. After the meal everyone sat around chatting in the shade of the cottonwoods. Dutch was playing with young Thomas and the twins down by the creek and Tom stood watching them from the deck while he waited for the coffee to brew. Thomas was wearing a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat. He had a little stick in his hand that was supposed to be a gun and he kept making shooting sounds, pish, pish, pish.

"He's cowboy crazy," Danny said. Tom hadn't noticed that he'd come to stand beside him. "Was I like that?"

"No. With you at that age it was all Star Wars. I guess he got the cowboy genes from me."

"It's ever since I showed him those episodes of Sliprock."

"Lawless heart of the Old West, where the many live in fear of the few..."

"One man stands alone against injustice...."

They finished it together:

"His name is Red McGraw."

"Lord help us," Tom said. "I haven't heard that for about fifty years. Hey, that reminds me. I want to show you something."

Danny followed him into the house and through to his study where he'd stacked the dusty old boxes that Lois had made him clear from the attic. She wanted to convert the space into an extra bedroom for the twins.

"I was going through this junk the other day. And since you're so into our family history, I didn't dare throw anything out without telling you. I wondered if Thomas might like some of this old stuff. Look..."

He opened one of the boxes and pulled out a big brown paper bag and emptied it onto his desk.

"It's my old cowboy gear."

Danny picked up the buckskin jacket and unfolded it.

"Wow, that's beautiful."

"It's an exact copy of Red McGraw's. Ray had it specially made for me. Too big for Thomas just yet."

"Yeah, but... Boy, he'd love it. And look at the hat! It's fantastic. What else is there?"

"There's this."

It was in a cloth bag of its own. Tom could still remember the smell of oiled leather. The gun belt was rolled up and he took it out of the bag and opened it up. The fake bullets were all in place, the leg-tie too. The gun in its holster. He handed the whole thing to his son.

"It looks so real."

"Yep."

They both stared at it for a long time.

"What do you think?" Danny said at last.

"About giving it to Thomas? I don't know."

"Me neither. He'd love it."

"He would."

"Kelly probably wouldn't like him to have it."

"Probably not."

"Let's think about it."

They put it away without another word and went to the kitchen and got the coffee ready. When they carried it out and down onto the lawn, everyone was fussing around Thomas. He'd fallen and cut his hand and Kelly was on her knees in front of him, dabbing the blood with a handkerchief and trying to soothe him. The boy was trying hard not to cry.

"What happened?" Danny asked.

"He just fell over," Kelly said. "It's not too bad."

Danny put his hand on Thomas's shoulder.

"Okay, son. There's a brave boy."

Tom was standing to one side, looking on.

"Semper Fortis," he said quietly.

He didn't think anybody had heard but Lois turned and asked him what he'd said. He smiled and shook his head.

"Nothing."

"Where have you gone?"