We Were Kings (36 page)

_________________________

Hope Springs, Arizona

MARTIN BUTLER SAT
at a booth in a roadside diner with his brother, spooning oatmeal patiently into his mouth and then wiping it off his face. His brother gagged slightly and pushed the food back out so that it ran down his chin. Butler wiped at it and then dabbed his lips. “You're not hungry today? That's all right. I had enough for both of us. I'll get us home, shall I?”

He rose from the booth and went to the register to pay the bill and tip the waitress. He smiled at the locals sitting at the counter and thanked one of them when they held the door for him, and he wheeled his brother out to the parking lot. It was a beautiful evening—the sky was turning purple and red on the horizon; the heat of the day had dulled and a light wind swept in off the desert plain. They had perhaps another hour of daylight and he felt he had a few more hours of driving left in him. He had a hotel reservation already booked for them in the next city and he was eager to get there. Lost in thought and with the sound of gravel crunching beneath the wheelchair's tires, he didn't hear the footsteps coming up behind him at first. A car sailed by on the desert highway and when it passed, the footsteps were still there. He didn't turn. “You came a long way,” he said, and paused.

“A long way,” Bobby Myles agreed and came up beside him, three or so feet away, an automatic pistol in his right hand. Butler looked at him.

“How did you find me?”

“The recuperative powers of the hot springs, the mineral water, the dry desert air. You had the brochures on your desk. To help your brother, you said. I knew you'd bring him here.”

“You knew I'd leave because you'd do the same thing.”

“Perhaps, but not in the way you did it.”

“No, but I had my reasons.”

“To betray them, you mean. And all the men to do with the boat and the guns.”

Butler ignored him and looked out at the sun turning the tops of the buttes the color of burning tinder. He stroked his brother's head.

“It's a grand country, isn't it?”

“It is.”

“A country where you can make a new start of things.”

Butler looked at the gun in Bobby's hand.

“What do you propose to do?” Butler said.

“There's only one thing I can do.”

Butler nodded, squeezed the rubber grips on the handles of the wheelchair tightly. His brother moaned, and Butler realized that he was looking at the man holding the gun and he was distressed. “It's all right, Coleman,” he soothed. “It's all right.” He reached forward and Bobby raised the gun slightly, watched as Butler softly stroked his brother's shoulder.

“There's no other way, then?” Butler said although he was no longer looking at Bobby; he seemed to be staring vacantly at the back of his brother's head, at the whorl of soft hair there.

“No, there's no other way.”

“Will you look after him? Will you make sure he's cared for? We have money, de Burgh's money, lots of it. You can put him some place where he'll be taken care of and keep the rest for yourself.”

“No,” Bobby said.

Butler bowed his head even as he kept his hand on his brother's shoulder and kneaded deeply. He leaned forward and smelled the top of his head. For a moment he leaned his face there, gently kissed the soft, thin hair, and then straightened.

He looked at Bobby, then glanced toward the diner, its neon bright against the encroaching darkness seeping down from the sky at its back. If only someone were to come out of the diner now, if a car were to pull into the lot. This day had come sooner than he'd ever thought possible and he hadn't prepared for it.

He looked back at Bobby. He had to buy some time. The longer he could keep him here talking, the more of a chance he'd find a way out of this. “Will you at least not do it in front of him?” he said. “He saw our daddy shot down when he was—”

The gunshots—three in succession—reverberated out into the vast expanse of the desert, the sound blooming and then only slowly fading. The bullets pierced Butler's lungs and heart and exited out his back; the third punched through a kidney and lodged in his spine. He fell onto his side, away from the wheelchair, and Bobby strode quickly back to his car.

He had parked at the rear of the diner so even as people came out of the entrance, he was already at the side of the building and out of sight. Once in the car, he rounded the back of the diner and then pulled out of the lot and onto the highway with a squeal of tires and in a cloud of sand. Looking in his rearview he could see other diners milling around the wheelchair and de Burgh's Lincoln, and he quickly got the car up to seventy miles an hour.

The desert stretched out on all sides, red sandstone buttes rising from the vast, flat plains, and then night was coming down, and the desert horizon was lit in pink and purple hues, and he turned on the headlights and tuned the radio to a country and western station and for a while hummed aimlessly to a song he knew neither the name of nor the words to but that was distinctly American.

_________________________

Boston

IT WAS STILL
early morning and Cal sat on the edge of his bed in his undershirt unwrapping the gauze from his hands. He stared at the damage from his fight with the kid: bright pink flesh, healing in the places where it had turned a dark purple, and inflamed red streaks spiderwebbing outward from the wound that he hoped weren't signs of infection. He flexed his fingers and winced, ran a hand through his hair. He looked up and about the room. The yellow-stained shades were down; a gray, diffuse light slanted through at the edges of the window. He'd had the windows closed against the storm and now the room smelled mildewed, as if a wet animal had curled up beneath the bed or behind the furniture. From above came the sounds of a couple fighting—a prostitute and her john, judging by the woman's swearing and demands for money—and from down the hall the gurgling of pipes and flushing toilets.

He stood slowly, rolling his shoulders, went to the windows and opened them. The air was cooler than it had been but still hot. The heat pressed back the sheer curtains. He looked out over Fort Point, a place without a fort and no longer a point. From his window he could see people passing over the Northern Avenue Bridge on their way to work. A tug pushed a barge and crane down the channel toward the open harbor. He remained there for a while, staring at the rooftops where puddles of rainwater glistened and large gulls floated, waiting for the sun to rise fully into the sky.

He watched it all without really seeing anything. He was listening for some sound of Lynne within him, but there was nothing this morning—only the weariness of being alive and not even the thought of what he would do next. After a moment he went and put on the coffee. While it was percolating he made his bed, tucking in the corners and pulling the edges tight, then he showered, bandaged his hands again, and ironed his shirt and pants. He dressed slowly, doing his tie and then undoing it and starting over. When he was finished he sat at the small Formica table by the window and lit a cigarette and stayed there for a long time.

Dante had a dream. He was on Tenean Beach. The sky was an unspoiled cerulean blue and the sand pulsated a downy white. The breeze was warm and scented with pine, and the ocean stretched out before him, as clear and still as a Tahitian lagoon. Along the shoreline there were no buildings and no factories polluting the air. Clusters of pine trees dotted the periphery, and above, gulls soared against the blue like kites. From behind him came a great pressing silence. Turning around, he saw an incline of beach rising to a rippling series of dunes that were tufted at the crest with beach grass. There were no sounds of highways or traffic. Perhaps there wasn't even a city there anymore, perhaps it was now just one giant space, a crater, a wide expanse of nothing that once was Boston. The only sound came from the black transistor radio beside him, which sat crookedly in the sand and played a ballad, the piano and saxophone sounding with a ghostly dissonance. He could tell by the melody that it was a song he had written—if only he could remember what he had named it.

This is where Sheila died,
he thought, but there she was with all the others who suddenly appeared around him.

Sitting cross-legged on a large patchwork blanket, Sheila played cards with their daughter. Maria had grown up, was nine or ten. Her face had lost its youthful pudginess, her cheeks narrowed delicately, her body was lean and athletic, and her skin was a deep bronze. She turned and, squinting against the sunlight, smiled at him. So did Sheila, her smile both coy and mocking. Typical of her to look at him that way after all he'd gone through finding her killer. He watched as she flipped the cards face up and noticed how they were all kings and queens and aces.

Off to his left, Claudia sat with their mother. Claudia's hair had turned white at the temples, but it gave her an almost regal, authoritative appearance, and his mother sat in that all-too-tight bathing suit that she'd worn for years and years, leaning back in the chair, a line of sweat dampening her upper lip as she soaked in the sun. Claudia reached out and put her hand on Dante's forearm. She said something but no sound came out. Whatever it was, he could tell that she had forgiven him.

Lynne was walking up from the water and toweling herself dry. She looked beautiful, vibrantly alive in a bright blue bathing suit, her cheeks flushed from her swim in the ocean. Cal came up beside her, no limp staggering his step, and stole the towel from her. His eyes shone with mischief—the same mischief that the war had taken from him. Lynne swung at Cal playfully, and he dodged her blow as if he were sparring. The laughter between them was swallowed up in the great silence.

The radio played another song, and it was the only sound in the world.

With the towel draped over his shoulders, Cal waved to get Dante's attention, and when he got it, Cal pointed to the shoreline.

She was there by the water. Margo. Waiting for him.

Moving across the sand felt like walking up an escalator that was going down. A flash of panic stole his breath—
Why am I walking so slow?
He began to jog and then launched into a sprint. As he got closer, Margo turned toward him. When she spoke, her voice came to him clearly. “There you are. I thought you were going to leave me here waiting forever.”

He reached out and grasped her hand. Even with the sun glaring down on her, it was cold to the touch. He looked her over. There were no marks on her arms, the skin supple and pink. She was wearing a broad white hat and a one-piece bathing suit that showed him she was eating well again. The extra weight looked good on her. “It's a gorgeous day,” she said. “I'm so glad everybody could make it.”

Two children ran behind them, their breaths huffing and their heels kicking up sprays of white sand. Dante turned and watched a younger version of himself, ten years old again, chasing Cal in a game of tag. Cal with his jet-black crew cut, sunburned but feeling no pain, sprinted ahead and doubled his lead. He was always a faster runner but the younger Dante moved up to an arm's length away. From where he was standing, the beach seemed to have no end, and he watched the two children running until they simply evaporated into the white horizon.

“Look at you two,” she said. “Always running from something. And you always one step behind.”

Dante stood with his wife for a long time, mesmerized at how the sunlight danced and shimmered against the water and the way the tide rhythmically rocked back and forth, as if it were a living, breathing thing.

Margo's hand clutched his tighter. She was looking off into the distance, and even though her eyes were shaded from the sun, she squinted as if to focus.

On the horizon, he saw a dark blemish against the blue. Perhaps a ship passing along the line where the sky and the water met. But it grew bigger and he could tell it was just a cloud. When he blinked, as though trying to rid his eyes of sand, he noticed there were now three dark clouds and they were growing. A breeze rippled the ocean and then it went still and quiet again. He felt a chill and he stepped back from the incoming tide.

“Dante, love. Just when things seem good in life, they take a turn for the worse. Out of everybody I know, you should know that best.” Her teeth were an unstained white, but when she leaned into him, he smelled something rotten.

“What are you talking about?”

“Things are going to get a whole lot worse. You don't even know.”

He turned back toward the beach. Everybody had left. Margo clutched his hand tighter and when she spoke, no sound came out. Again, the world had turned mute and he couldn't make out what she was trying to say.

The dark clouds in the sky converged and blossomed like a bruise, blotting out the sun. The ocean darkened, and in the distance, it began to churn as if some great behemoth had stirred and was making its ascent to the surface. Margo let go of his hand, and he couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying.

Dante kicked out his legs and threw off the bedsheet as if it were on fire and burning into his flesh. With his heart hammering wildly in his chest, he sat up in the bed and felt vertigo like he'd never felt before, the light from the window bending and the bed below seeming to topple over on a great rush of water. He coughed into his hand and soon his vision steadied and he could tell it was just a dream. He was back in his bed and it was Boston once again. His brow was covered in sweat and he used the bedsheet and wiped at his face. He stood up and realized he was naked. For a moment, he felt vulnerable, ashamed. On the floor was a pair of boxer shorts. He slipped them on, almost falling and seeing spots dance wildly in his vision. From his dresser, he grabbed the syringe, a foil packet, and a spoon tarnished black by flame. All that time away from the junk, and he still could set up a dose with ease. The flame caressed the spoon and the junk sizzled and wept. Before he knew it, the syringe was half full, and tapping the vein he had used last night, he pressed the tip under his skin and brought it all down.

Not even a minute had passed before Dante's stomach turned. He rushed into the bathroom. As he dry-heaved above the sink, he tried his best not to glimpse the reflection in the mirror. The junk was cut poorly, but it was all he had.

Back in the hallway, he stood before the small bedroom of Maria's. He opened the door and stepped in quietly. The bed was empty. Of course he knew it would be empty, but then why did he expect her to be there, waiting for him to drag her out of bed and bring her to the kitchen for breakfast?

One stuffed animal lay upon the pillow looking sideways at him, and the bedsheets were neatly tucked in, not even one wrinkle. Dante's breath ran ragged again. He sat on the bed, lowered his head into his hands, and sobbed, cried until there was nothing left but snot filling his nostrils and a pathetic wheezing rattling in his throat. He twisted around and lay down on the bed, suddenly shivering, feeling the cold pulse through him. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to Tenean.
That's where they all were; that's where I should be too.

His eyes grew heavy, the light of the room dimmed, and in the distance, he thought he could hear the lull of the ocean. Sleep returned without dreams. This time, there was only blackness, a great seething nothing. When he woke, it was dark again, and the feeling hung heavy that the world would keep on moving without him. He remembered what Margo had said,
You don't even know,
and tried to look into the future that she'd spoken of but could only make it as far as the syringe, the tarnished spoon, and the last hit of junk that waited for him in his bedroom.

You don't even know
.