Walk (Gentry Boys) (26 page)

He didn’t argue. 

I kept driving. 

Evie

I thought about going home to my own apartment.  Yet the idea of walking into its emptiness and waiting for an unknown number of hours for some word from Stone was just too depressing to consider. 

I couldn’t even be angry, not really. Stone was doing what he thought he had to.

For a few seconds I thought about going to the Gentrys.  Deck Gentry, Stone’s half brother, seemed like the most likely candidate.  I knew where he lived and I also knew that he had more resources at his disposal than the average suburban family man.  If he thought Stone was heading right into trouble he would do whatever he could to put a stop to it.  I had grabbed my purse and was headed to the door but I paused before my hand hit the knob.

  This was between the two brothers.  It didn’t include me.  It didn’t include Deck, or anyone else.  One of these days that terrible four-year rift between Stone and Conway would need to be confronted. This might be that day.  I understood why Stone had left me behind.  In his place I would have done the same thing if I’d thought there was the smallest chance I might reconcile with Macon. 

After tossing my bag to the floor I flopped back on the couch. There weren’t any plans in my head but I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere until I heard something, one way or another. 

Accepting that fact did not make the clock move any faster.    

The television seemed too shrill for my dark mood so I turned it off.  I thought about calling Kendra but I didn’t really want to explain tonight’s events and Kendra had an almost extra sensory way of knowing when something was up. 

There was a book lying on the end table beside the couch.  I smiled as I picked it up, recognizing right away that it was my copy of
Les Misérables
that Stone had borrowed.  This unabridged version was over fourteen hundred pages of small print.  Definitely not for the casual reader.  A paperclip that seemed to be serving as a bookmark was neatly hugging page nine hundred and sixty eight.  I flipped around, searching for and finding my favorite part, where Eponine dies at the barricade in the arms of her unrequited love, Marius.  I’ve always had a perverse affection for that tragic scene.

After I spent some time wallowing in the heartbreaking last gasps of fictional Eponine, I set the book down and picked up my phone.   

My mother had always been a night owl. Whenever I stumbled out of bed at two a.m. as a child in search of a bathroom or a glass of water I would always find her seated at her mahogany office desk with a mug of coffee and a stack of thesis projects.  She’d prod me back to bed without scolding and then return to her work, sometimes not seeking out her bed until the first wisps of dawn. 

However, by some quirk of the universe she’d married the king of the morning.  My father was often in bed before ten and always awake before five.  He had eight different newspapers delivered every day and he read them all.  When I think of him I think of newspapers; ransacked piles of current events covering the length of the farm-style kitchen table.  Macon and I would always have to shove them away to find some space for our cereal bowls. 

She was wide awake, answering on the second ring. 

“Evie?  What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing, Mom.  Nothing at all.  I was just sitting here reading your favorite book and suddenly I felt like interrupting your work.” 

“And a welcome interruption it is,” she said, laughing.  She had the most wonderful laugh; it seemed to bubble right out of her throat.  I’ve been told my laugh is the same but I’m not sure if that’s true because no one truly hears the sound of their own laughter. 

She wanted to hear more about Stone.  I’d already told her a lot but it made her happy to know that I was happy so I told it all to her again. 

“He sounds impressive across the board,” she said. 

I felt myself blushing as my treacherous mind flashed to images a girl didn’t want to deal with when having a conversation with her mother.   

“He is, ah, impressive in every way,” I stammered and then changed the subject. 

She talked about how she’d made some friends and started a local wine club.  She talked about her classes and how much of a relief it was to be teaching at a small college.

“So no faculty drama?” I asked, remembering how she and my dad were always raging over some intrigue or another at their university. 

“Oh, there’s always faculty drama. It’s as inescapable as mood swings in a middle school.  Do you recall the chronic battles your father fought with Adam Glick, the department head?  Awful man.  Voted against your father’s tenure because they had an argument about whether to include the Norse gods in a freshman mythology seminar.” 

“I remember when Dad mooned him at a staff holiday party.  When you guys came home you were laughing so hard you could hardly walk.” 

“Well,” she admitted with a laugh, “we may have enjoyed a little too much wine that evening.”  She paused and sighed.  “I miss him.” 

I closed my eyes, feeling the burn of tears. 

“I miss him too,” I whispered. “I miss them both.” 

“Evie,” my mother said.  All traces of laughter were gone.  “I know you think I’ve abandoned Macon.” 

“No!” I was startled.  “No, Mom.  I don’t think that at all.  We can’t help Macon where he is right now, even if he would see us.  And then when he gets out I have my doubts that anything will be different than it was before.”

She sniffed.  “It hurts to hear that.”

“It hurts to say it.  Sometimes I even blame myself.  I covered for him in the beginning.  I made excuses.  I lied for him. By the time you and Dad started figuring it out he had a real problem.”

“Macon’s addiction is not your fault, sweetheart.” 

“It’s not your fault either, Mom. It just…
is
.” 

“It just is,” she repeated.  She took a deep, shuddering breath before continuing.  “When the two of you were born we thought we were the luckiest people on earth.  I’d been told how unlikely it was that I would ever bear a child and then, by the grace of the universe, I had two.  Two perfect babies.  Oh, how desperately we wanted to give you an enchanted world.  That was our mistake. We wanted so badly for the magic to be true that when the ugly face of reality came knocking we were not prepared.  We hadn’t prepared you.  We hadn’t prepared Macon.”

“Mom.  You gave us everything.” 

“It wasn’t enough,” she whispered. 

I wouldn’t cry.  It was time to stop crying. 

“You want to know the truth?” I asked her gently.

“Yes.” 

“It’s a relief to forgive someone else.  It’s generous, liberating. Forgiving ourselves is much harder. It almost seems selfish.  It’s not though.  Surviving isn’t selfish.  Wanting to be happy isn’t selfish.”   

“Are you happy, Evie?” 

“I am,” I said firmly.  “I am happy.  There will always be a place of hurt in my heart where Macon ought to be.  But I’m happy, Mommy.  I know how to live and I know how to love.  And I thank you for that.  You and Daddy.” 

“I love you, honey.” 

“I love you too, Mom.” 

We stayed on the phone for a little while longer, steering the conversation to more mild topics like books and music and the beauty of the fall season in her new Utah home.  When I mentioned that Stone and I wanted to come up and see her for Thanksgiving next month she surprised me. 

“No need,” she said.  “I’ll be coming to you.  I already bought my ticket.” 

It was a good phone call and I was glad it had happened.  I hung up feeling like I’d just crossed a fearful bridge and could now continue traveling. 

The clock struck midnight.  There still wasn’t any word from Stone. 

The apartment was too quiet.  Since it was Friday night and many of the other residents were college students there were some nearby bursts of laughter and loud music.  Somehow that only made Stone’s apartment seem emptier. 

I wandered into his bedroom, which was both sparse and clean.  It smelled like him and I inhaled deeply as arousal stirred in my belly. I slipped my shoes off and was about to sit on the bed when something caught my eye. 

I’d seen it before, this overused piece of paper.  The first time I ever noticed it Stone had seemed embarrassed as he explained to me what it was. 

The name of the institution was stamped at the top.  It was among the first pieces of paper he’d been issued in prison. The others he had used to write letters to his brother, but this one he kept, marking a perfect short line of ink every morning he awoke behind bars. 

Once you knew that you could appreciate the ghastly effect.  The paper was covered with individual identical lines, each representing a day.  Stone told me there were one thousand five hundred and thirteen lines, one for every day he’d spent in prison.  He’d thumbtacked it to the wall behind the door and I touched it now, running my fingertips along the wilted paper. 

So many days.  So much time.  The first time I’d seen it I’d thought it was morbid, although I didn’t tell him so.  I didn’t understand why he would want a constant reminder of what he’d lost.  But now, as I stood back and studied the thing, I began to understand. 

He’d made it.  Stone Gentry had endured.  He’d come out on the other side as a good man determined to build a life for himself and come hell or high water that’s what he was doing.  This piece of paper told the story and that story ended in a victory. 

I set my phone down on his dresser and curled up on the bed.  There were still some superstitious parts of my soul that believed in the mysticism of old tales.  I thought of one now.  I thought of a young girl yearning for home and how she’d chanted some hopeful, determined words to get there.  I figured it couldn’t hurt to try them, with my own variation of what I yearned for.

“He will come home.  He will come home. He will come home.”

Repeating them out loud was a comfort and I was sure they were true.  Little by little I felt my body relax and when the soft, oblivious fingers of sleep began to overtake me, I let them. 

STONE

The town was sleep.

Well, most of it, anyway. 

The prison lights were on.  They were always on. 

I ignored the hollow feeling of dread that surged through me as I glimpsed the fences and the barbed wire, the guard towers and the endless tiny windows not wide enough for a fist to pass through.  There were eyes behind all of them.  I knew.  I’d been among them. 

Conway stayed stoic and silent in the passenger seat beside me until the familiar landmarks of our hometown emerged.  Then he sharply inhaled and grabbed onto the door handle like he needed something solid in his hand. 

“You all right?” I asked. 

He shot me a look.  “What are we doing here?”

Something had shifted in him.  The cocky, dangerous veneer had been stripped.  I kept hearing Jackson’s words about how Con had begged him to look out for me.  After all this time and all this silence I thought I knew how my brother felt.  I should have learned not to make assumptions.  A long time ago a terrible series of events had unfolded because what seemed to be true wasn’t true at all.

“We’re just visiting,” I said, feeling my jaw tense over the sight of Main Street. 

We were only about a hundred yards from where it had happened.  The accident.  Some things I refused to remember about that night, like the scream of metal on metal, the sight of blood.  Everything else was as clear as the desert night sky.  

We’d already looked for Conway at several usual places and next we were going to check the butte; the small, crude mountain at the edge of town that was a frequent hangout.  We were driving past a small park and Erin had unbuckled her seatbelt so she could reach out the window.  I didn’t know what she was reaching for.  At the moment it didn’t seem important.  Later, I would have given anything to know. 

There was a small gravel lot next to the park.  I pulled in there, hoping we weren’t running afoul of any trespassing rules.  I checked my watch.  One a.m.  Many hours remained until daylight. 

Conway was eyeing me.  “Are we just going to sit here?”

“Only until the sun comes up.” 

He made an exasperated sound.  “What the fuck are we going to do all that time?”

“This.”

“You mean for the next six hours I can ask you questions and you will supply cryptic one word responses?”

“Yes.”

Con grunted and leaned an arm out the window.  Across the street and down a ways the local watering hole, the Dirty Cactus, piped out music and raucous laughter. 

He lit a cigarette.  “Did you get reborn into some kind of religion during your time in prison?”

“No.”

“Then what’s with this Zen Buddha bullshit?”

“We can switch roles if you’d like.”

He blew out a cloud of smoke, frowned and then put the cigarette out.  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can ask the questions instead and you can give the answers.” 

He looked at me. It wasn’t a hostile look though.  He ran a hand over his chin and appeared to be thinking.  Finally he swallowed and nodded.

“All right, I’ll play.  Ask your questions.”

“How many of my letters did you read, Conway?”

He looked away again, out the window.  “Most of them.  Eventually.” 

“You never wrote back.”

“No, I never did.” 

“Why?”

When he faced me again there was an ancient agony on his face.  I’d seen it before, the day he’d walked into our living and saw me with Erin. It was bottomless and horrible. 

“I was wrong,” he croaked.  Then he cleared his throat and continued. “I made a mistake.  I ran like a child that day.  If I’d stayed and faced the two of you like a man Erin would still be here.” 

“What?” I was stunned.  All this time, it had never occurred to me that Conway blamed himself for Erin’s death. 

“I was fucked up in the head, Stone.  It just seemed like everything solid in the world was collapsing.  You, Erin, Mom.  In that moment I thought I’d lost it all.”  He shook his head miserably.  “So fucking stupid.  I didn’t know yet how much there still was to lose.” 

He had trouble getting any more words out.  He faced away once more and breathed the night air while I quietly waited until he felt like he could talk again.  There’d been so much blame, so much punishment, so much lost. 

We’d all played our parts so we were all at fault. And yet, nobody was at fault.   

Conway turned his head.  He watched me for a little while before speaking. 

“At first I didn’t read
any
of your letters, Stone. I couldn’t stand to touch them.  In fact I would tear them up as soon as Chase delivered them.  And then I stopped ripping them up but I didn’t read them either.  I collected them, held them together in a thick rubber band and kept them under my mattress. It wasn’t that I hated you.  I never hated you.  Or her.  The day she died was the last day I said her name out loud and I don’t expect that to change. It’s just…everything was so broken and I was a dumb goddamn kid who didn’t know how to put it back together.”   

“But you
did
read the letters at some point.”

He sighed.  “Yes. I did.”

“And?”

He offered a grim smile.  “And by that time I was so fucking far off course I figured you were better off without me. “

I stared at him.  “How could you think that?  How the hell could you possibly-“

“We’d always been thick as thieves, you and me,” he cut in. “I knew once you got out you’d be looking for a way back to what we had.” 

He squinted at the halo of light surrounding the prison in the distance. 

“I may end up there at some point,” he mused.  “Lord knows with all the shit I’ve been into I ought to be there already.  You’ve done your time, brother.  You never should have been sent there in the first place. But now you’ve got a chance to live clean and you should take it. Don’t follow me down the sinkhole.”  He looked me in the eye.  “So you let this go now, Stone.  After tonight, you let this go.” 

Conway seemed to think that was going to be the end of it, that I would just accept those words as gospel and retreat.  He slumped in his seat and returned to the task of staring out the window at nothing.  I gave him the courtesy of silence for a little while.  We passed the next hour sitting side by side, thinking separate thoughts and breathing the cool night air that tasted faintly of smoke.  He flinched when I cleared my throat to speak again. 

“You told Deck,” I said. 

His expression said he understood exactly what I was talking about but I explained anyway.

“You told Deck that Chrome Gentry was my father.”

He nodded slowly.  “Yeah, I told him that.” 

“How did you know?”

Con scowled.  “Come on, I know he must have told you this already.” 

“I want to hear it from you.” 

“Mom told me, all right?  She came home shitfaced and bawling the night before…”

“The night before Erin died,” I finished, just taking a guess, but he winced and nodded. 

“Yeah.  I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up there she was, all fucked up and angry.  She had her head in the past and she started telling stories, the kind of stories we’d heard before around town but never knew whether to believe.  She was already married to Elijah but she was in love with Chrome so she fucked around with him and you were the result.”

I waited.  “And you?”

He shifted.  “Chrome didn’t want anymore kids.  She thought you’d be enough to get him to stick around but he wasn’t interested.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

“I didn’t hear another question.” 

“What else did she say, Con?”

He shrugged.  “Nothing.” 

“I don’t believe you. ” 

Conway rolled his eyes and let out a grunt. 

I wasn’t giving up though.  Tonight we were going to sort through all the old business, all the old messes, and all the old heartbreaks, one way or another. 

“Did she tell you that Chrome was your father too?” I prodded. 

“No.”

“Did she tell you that Benton was your father?” 

His expression darkened but he said nothing. 

“Benton’s dead, you know,” I said. 

Conway gave me a dirty look. “Of course I know that.  Everyone’s dead.  Chrome, Benton, Elijah; you could fill a motherfucking sandbox with the dust of dead Gentry men.” 

He lit another cigarette but now his movements were jerky, agitated. 

“What the hell difference does it make anyway?  Yeah, Mom was crushed when Chrome rejected her and their newborn baby boy so what did she do? Well, I’ll tell you since you want to know so bad.  She fucked his brother.  She fucked his brother out of spite, the terrible and sadistic Benton Gentry.” Conway grinned without humor.  “And that’s where I came in.”  

“Oh.”  I reached out and gripped the steering wheel, squeezing my fingers around it.  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

He was letting the cigarette burn down without inhaling.  He would flick the ash out the window and then stare at the burning stick like he wasn’t sure what to do with it next. 

“You know,” I said gently, “they would love to know that they have another brother. Cord, Creed and Chase-“

“Have all gone way too fucking far out of their way for me already,” he snapped.  “I’m not their problem.  They don’t deserve to have that baggage shoved down their throats.  They’ll feel like they need to do something about it.  And then instead of having one brother chasing me all over the state of Arizona with hurt in his eyes, I’ll have four.” He ground out his cigarette.  “Leave them be.” 

Con wouldn’t talk about it anymore.  He wasn’t willing to budge when it came to telling the triplets he was really their half brother.  And if I went and told them myself, what good would it really do?  There’d never been two closer brothers than me and Con.  If I couldn’t get through to him, even now, there wasn’t much chance anyone else could. 

It was actually a little cold, sitting there with the windows open, but I wasn’t willing to close them.  I liked the feel of the cool outside air on my skin.  I’d gone too long without it. 

Conway was looking out the window again.  A pair of teenagers pulled up beside us, probably looking for a quiet place to mess around.  They left after a few minutes when they realized we weren’t going anywhere. 

“So, about your girl,” Conway said. 

“Evie.” 

“Yeah, Evie.”  A small smile touched his lips.  “She’s a little spitfire, huh?”

“That she is.  Listen, she told me about how you chased off that maniac who was following her.”

“Well, I ordered her
not
to tell you.”

“She almost didn’t.  But I owe you for that, Con.  The thought of something happening to her…Jesus, I would have killed that son of a bitch.” 

He raised his eyebrows and studied me.  “Damn, you’re all wrapped up in it.” 

I scoffed.  “Knock it off.” 

“Well, you are.” 

“Okay.” 

He laughed outright.  “Stone Gentry’s in love.  This is fucking cosmic.  Never thought I’d see the day.” 

I brushed it off with a smile.  “Yeah, whatever.” 

Con shrugged.  “You know, I wouldn’t have pictured you with a girl like that.”

“A girl like what?”

He grinned.  “Smart.”

We looked at each other for a second and then cracked up laughing at the same time.  I shoved him lightly. 

That broke the ice, at least for the moment.  Con asked curious questions about Evie and nodded thoughtfully when I gave him the answers.  I told him about my job with the moving company and confided that I planned to ask Evie if she wanted to move in together soon. 

I was a little hesitant to talk to Conway about how much happiness I’d found these last few months.  There was still a chasm of unresolved feelings between us.  Yet I didn’t doubt that he was pleased to hear that life was being good to me. 

“Hey.”  He jerked his head.  “Do me a favor.  Can you tell Evie I’m not really an asshole?  I just act like one in real life.” 

“She didn’t exactly say you were acting like an asshole.” 

“Then she didn’t describe me adequately.”

I eyed him.  “So what about you?”

He eyed me back.  “What about me?”

“You haven’t really talked about what’s going on in your life, Con.” 

Conway played with his lighter.  “If I let you in on some of those details I believe you’d be considered an accessory after the fact.” 

“Bullshit.” 

Conway shook his head.  “Nope.  Truth.” 

I hesitated.  “Okay, so forget shop talk.  What about girls?”

He raised an eyebrow.  “Shit, you need me to tell you about girls now?  What the hell else did you forget how to do in that cage?”