He meant it, and I knew that. Bobby had never lacked sincerity. It was one of the reasons so many loved him.
Allie hugged him, and then he turned to look at me again. He then glanced toward the corner of the cemetery at our parents’ graves, slid on his sunglasses, returned to his car, and drove out of the cemetery.
Two boys appeared and lowered the coffin into the ground. Allie stood crying quietly. I fed my hand inside her arm, turned her gently, and led her away from the hole back to her house, where she once again climbed into bed and slept like Jake.
SOMETHING WAS BOTHERING ME. The location of Jake’s cane. Nearly a quarter mile behind the crash site. Yes, the blast could have blown it that far. Farther, even. But it was unscathed. Not a scratch. And things that have been blown up usually show evidence of that. While Allie slept I returned to the crash site and nosed around. I was no expert on semis, but nowhere on any piece of metal or frame or door or anywhere did anything say Peterbilt. Which struck me as odd.
As I was studying the wreckage, two black Denalis pulled in behind me. My brother stepped out. No jacket. No tie. Sleeves rolled up. “Got a minute?”
I followed the Denalis back to the cemetery. Bobby got out and waited for me, and we walked together toward Mom’s and Dad’s graves. Rosco made the rounds of each headstone, peeing on several. Ending on Dad’s. I chewed two antacids.
Bobby looked at me, then down at the grave and back at me. “Been awhile.”
“Yep.”
Mom died two decades ago. Dad followed some time later. He bought the plots when they married, which I always found rather morbid. It wasn’t my decision to put him here. I hadn’t seen him since we laid her to rest.
Bobby asked, “You make his funeral?”
“No.”
“Me either.” We watched as a yellow trail of Rosco’s urine snaked across the sand. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“The day we buried Mom.”
“Really?” He looked surprised.
My brother and I hadn’t talked this much in a long, long time.
“On my way off the island, I stopped to fill up with gas. Evidently Dad had heard about the funeral and had come to either pay his last respects or dig through her personals for a few nickels. I bumped into him at the counter. He didn’t recognize me. I was taller. Thicker. He shoulder-bumped me, mumbled something angry, and then stood pumping gas into a worn-out ragtop Mustang. I returned to the pump where he was still mumbling something derogatory about my being a ‘punk with a ponytail.’ I remember chuckling, and he asked me what was so funny. I said, ‘You are, old man.’
“He got swol’ up and cussed me. Said something about teaching me some respect. I realized he had no idea who I was. I broke his jaw, fractured his left eye socket, and left him lying unconscious on the concrete. Driving out, I pitched his keys in the retention pond.”
Bobby laughed. “Did you feel better?”
“Not really.”
He watched me chewing the last of the antacids. “You still drinking milk and eating Oreos?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
He slid off his sunglasses and turned them in his hand. “How you been?”
“Good days and bad. You?”
“Same.” He could never lie in front of Mom. “You need anything?”
I chuckled. “You guys invented a time machine yet?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Let me know when you do.”
“You’ll be the first.”
“And you could tell those guys at the VA to stop hassling me over my insulin.”
“I’ll get right on it.” He glanced at the fresh, upturned earth of Jake Gibson’s grave. “Allie going to be okay?”
I shrugged. “She’s sleeping now.”
“How’d you hear?”
“It’s a long story, but in short, I saw the smoke. And you?”
“She called.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“It’s not like that.” He shook his head. “Truth is, she asked me if I knew how to find you. I told her I did not. I told her I thought you had a cabin somewhere in the mountains, but as for a phone . . . I had no idea.”
I stared at Momma’s headstone. “Sometimes it’s just better if the world can’t find me and . . .” I laughed. “I can’t find the world.”
Bobby nodded at the two graves. “They’d be proud.”
“She would.” I spat. “Not sure what would have made him proud.”
He stared into Dad’s name and back into our childhood. “Strange how something so little can determine so much of your life.”
I nodded but said nothing.
He brushed the acorns off Mom’s grave. “Well . . . she’d be proud.”
“Of what?”
“You and me . . . standing here talking. With me still alive.”
I looked at him. “Bobby, I never wanted you dead. Not even on the bad days.” I paused long enough to raise his eyes to mine. “You still looking over your shoulder?”
He looked at me, glanced away, and then stared at me out of the corner of his eye. The real reason he’d brought me here. “Should I be?”
“One thing my senior trip taught me is that killing a man doesn’t kill the pain.”
He studied me a long minute. “You sure about that?”
I weighed my head side to side. “I’m pretty sure.”
He smiled. “You remember when Allie’s old man beat down the door and you hit him with a crescent wrench?”
“And you bit off half his ear?”
We laughed. The sound surprised us both, but rather than speak, we let the echo drift through the trees. When it disappeared, I said, “I ate through a straw for six weeks.”
“That’s my image of you. Standing over her mom. Shielding Allie. Looking up at that crazy, drunk old man and telling him that he can’t do what he wants to do. Not today.”
I ate another antacid. “Standing up always costs something.”
He laughed and waved his hand across the front of his pants. “Cost me a change of pants.”
I laughed. Squinted one eye. “My image of you is a little different.”
“Not sure I want to know this.”
“You’re standing next to Allie, in the church.”
He knew the picture. “Not my best moment.”
“Have to agree with you there.” I paused. “That one hurt.”
Moments passed. When he did speak, his tone was softer. “I used to look for you in crowds. Windows. Back alleys. Cars driving by. I was convinced you were waiting on me.”
“That’s because I was.”
“Thought I was just being paranoid.”
“Miami. Second reelection campaign. Had a suite next to yours at the Biltmore. Top floor. When you walked out on the patio at two a.m. to talk on the phone, I was standing three feet from you.”
“That was a long way down.”
“Six years later, you were acting as master of ceremonies at some Disney function. I drove your car in the parade. A shotgun inside my costume.”
He raised both eyebrows.
“And later, you were speaking in Pensacola at the Air and Space Museum. I was in the stall next to you in the bathroom. A guitar string in my hand.”
“Why a guitar string?”
I shrugged. “Just something I learned.”
“Senior trip taught you that, too?”
I nodded.
“What stopped you?”
I shrugged. “Same thing that’s been stopping me for four decades. Same thing stopping me now.”
He eyed his two goons. “Which is . . .”
“It won’t help. You, or me.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve got some experience.”
He nodded. “Jo-Jo?” He spoke softly, with his chin resting on his chest. “Don’t underestimate the other man’s pain.”
I turned toward him. His bodyguards took a defensive step toward me. He wa
ved them off. I said, “You sober?”
He looked away. “Yes.”
I waited until he looked at me. “Really?”
He rubbed his palms together. “Yes.”
I spoke what we both felt. “A tough stretch of years. We all lost a little something.”
He agreed. “More so for you than anyone.”
This was a realization he’d never voiced. “What makes you say that?”
“I saw your file.”
“You mean I actually have one?”
He laughed. “Not officially. Wasn’t until I got clearance. It’s top secret.”
“How’d you get ahold of it?”
“I’m chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. I see what the president sees—” He smiled. “Often before he sees it.”
“Ironic, don’t you think?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
We stood a long moment. “You should burn it.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. An offering. The first time my brother had touched me in decades. “Good to see you, Joseph.” There was no malice in it.
“Bobby?”
“Yes.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
The hawk on Capitol Hill didn’t seem so hawkish. “I wouldn’t blame you if you decide otherwise.”
“I don’t want what you have. What good would it do me? Would it take us back in time?”
“Sometimes . . . No, most times, when I’m sitting at my desk, I don’t ask myself what I think I should do. I ask myself what would you do?”
“No wonder you have so many critics.”
He laughed.
I picked at a stone with the toe of my shoe. “Bobby, I can never reconcile our history, but I’ve never hated you.”
“Never?”
I stared back through the years. “Hate is a powerful weapon. But it is powerless when it comes to cutting chains off the human heart.”
When he looked at me, he slid his sunglasses back over his eyes. “What does?”
I stared up, then down at Mom’s grave. “Many nights I used to envision holding your throat in my hands. Squeezing. Until your eyes popped out of your head. Until I felt your neck break.”
“What stopped you?”
“The memory of one good day.” I crossed my arms. “You were nine. I was seven. We were running up and down the beach. No shirt. No shoes. Tanned skin. Our hair streaked blond from the sun. You found three dollars, and we ran a mile down the beach to the store. Bought a—”
He interrupted me with a smile on his face. “Gallon of milk and some—”
“Oreos.”
He spoke softly. “A good Oreos-and-milk day.”
“We walked back out on the beach, swigging from that jug, licking off the cream-filled middle, flinging the cookies like Frisbees . . . and then we just sat on the sand as the tide rolled over our toes and the sun fell off the edge of the earth in front of us. The one day when all the world was good and right and nothing hurt us.” I paused. “The thing that stopped me was the thought, or hope, that someday we’ll get back to good.”
He touched my shoulder and left me standing with Momma.
17
Despite the inner turmoil at home, the Blue Tornado continued to prosper. Mr. Billy had been right. People drove from all around to sit on a bench, run their toes through the sand, sip something cold, and watch the sun go down over the Gulf. Business doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again. Six employees turned into two dozen, porches were expanded, more lights were strung. Bonfires maintained. More “honeymoon cottages” were built along the dunes, and stayed occupied most of the time. Weekends were filled with white dresses, live music, fresh shrimp boil, and good tips. Given the climate of the country, Cape San Blas became a vacation destination. Construction boomed. Allie’s folks had hit a gold mine. And to his credit, Mr. Billy stayed away from the bottle. For us, the Blue Tornado was one of the happiest places on earth. We were insulated and isolated from everything save the mail and an occasional hurricane.
Following my attempt at heroism in Allie’s bedroom, Mrs. Eleanor loved me and gave me free rein to do what I wanted at the Blue Tornado. I worked every time the doors were open. I bused tables, washed dishes, cut and nailed lumber to expand the decks, hung lights, ran speaker wire, waited tables, swapped out kegs, and backed the bar, which Bobby had begun tending. Given his easygoing style, his uncanny ability to hear the same story a thousand times, and the fact that he’d never met a stranger, he was a natural. While he stood behind the bar and made people feel better, I worked behind the scenes. If it needed doing, I did it. And I didn’t wait for someone to tell me it needed doing either. As a result, I learned to do most everything and I made money hand over fist.
I bought my first car when I was just barely fourteen. An old Ford pickup. Inline six. Three on the column. Bought it out of a junkyard. My mom thought I was crazy, but it was my money. In a week I had it rolling. And in another week I had it running. By the third week my mom was driving it to get groceries. We were walking out of the grocery store when a man stopped us. He said to my mom, “You wouldn’t want to sell that truck, would you?”
She looked at me. I said, “How much will you give me?”
After expenses, I quadrupled my money, and it didn’t take me long to learn how to “flip” cars. Given a rough economy and the fact that the bank’s prime interest rate was in the teens, folks were looking to stretch a dollar, and I was all too happy to help them. Take something dead and used up, find out what killed it, fix that—or replace it—and then move on to the next thing. I understood cars and could diagnose what was wrong with them. Sure, I read manuals and even bought my own set of Chiltons, but something in my brain was hardwired to understand machines and what made them work, and not work.
Allie was never far. Often, it was us three. Me, Allie, and Bobby. Scouring the beach became our version of a treasure hunt. Given the entrepreneurial spirit she’d inherited from her father, Allie began making shell-covered mirrors; her mom hung them in the honeymoon cottages and sold them at the restaurant.
If there was one place on planet Earth where the three of us were happiest, it was the shoreline of Cape San Blas. Nothing angry or evil or sad found us out there. Not Mr. Billy. Not the TV news. Not my mom’s tears. Not the pained looks on Mrs. Eleanor’s face. Not my father’s absence. Twice a day, the beach cleaned itself. Leaving no residue of yesterday. Maybe that’s why we liked it.
In the summer of 1970, when I turned fifteen, I bought myself a wrecked 1967 ragtop Corvette. Over the course of a summer I rummaged junkyards and pieced it back together. New rear end, gears, brakes, interior bucket seats, canvas top, electrical wiring.
One of my other junkyard gems was a wrecked Monte Carlo. It’d been rolled and then wrapped around a telephone pole. Wasn’t much left. Except the engine. It was perfect. To my great fortune, the guy running the junkyard didn’t take the time to pry back the hood and take a look at it. Had he done that, he’d have never sold it. Beneath the hood was a Chevrolet 350-cubic-inch engine. The technical name was LT-1. That designation meant several things: higher compression, angle plug heads, four-bolt main, larger exhaust, larger intake, two carburetors, radical cam. In English, that meant it produced a little over 500 horsepower with normal aspiration. Meaning, no supercharger. The guys at the auto repair shop were drooling.
Because I wanted to know what made it tick, I took it apart, then meticulously put it back together. But better. I then bolted that orange and chrome beauty into my Corvette, replaced the rear-end gears with .411 posi-traction, linked it to a Muncie four-speed rock-crusher transmission, and scared my mom half to death the first time I took her for a ride.
When I pulled back into the drive, she unlatched her white-knuckled death grip on the door handle, unbuckled, and shook her head. “Jo-Jo, you just made your mother pee herself.”
In the first month, I had a dozen offers to sell.
BY THE EARLY 1970s the nightly
news was filled with images of American boys returning home in flag-laden boxes. Like the rest of the country, my mom watched Cronkite at six thirty with religious regularity, and when she tucked me in she’d kiss me with tearstained lips.
“Mom, why are you crying?”
Bobby was two years older. Thick glasses. Loved history. He raised chickens in our backyard and spent his egg money on books. One night, with the moon shining through our window, Mom glanced at my brother’s bed. His sandy-blond hair was spread across the pillow. His eyes were darting back and forth beneath his lids. Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples lay next to his head.
She wiped her nose on my sheet, kissed my forehead, and closed our door quietly behind her. After that I started paying attention to what Cronkite said, and one word he kept saying over and over. “Draft.” I thought it had to do with a poorly built house, so I asked the boys down at the auto shop. They explained the numbers to me and what they meant. Didn’t take me long to figure out why Mom was crying.
Bobby’s number was getting closer.
It was just a matter of time. He was in junior college, working at the restaurant full time, constantly looking over his shoulder. I had started doing the same.
On the first day of our senior year, Allie sat down in the front seat of my Corvette. Mrs. Eleanor placed her hand on my forearm, both holding and squeezing it. “Joseph?” She rarely called me by my real name.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You see who’s in this car with you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And she’s my only child?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you understand she’s my whole world?”
I could barely hear her over the hum and glorious lope of the engine. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you understand that she tells me everything, and I do mean everything.”
I nodded.
“And you understand what those black numbers mean on those white signs alongside the road?”
I gave her a confident, knowing look. “They tell you what highway you’re on.”
She squeezed my arm tighter. “Those are not the numbers I’m talking about.”
I knew that. I smiled. I revved the engine to about 5,000 rpms. For the exhaust, I’d run straight pipes with thin mufflers. I hollered over the noise. “We’ll be just fine.”