Summer Sons(57)

The pair circled, hands hovering near collarbones in neutral loose fists. Andrew kept his attention on the winged movement of Halse’s elbows, the taut corded muscle of his arms.

Halse said, “Get at me, come on.”

Andrew dove for him. Halse accepted the tackle that bore him to the ground and flipped them in mid-fall, slamming Andrew into the dirt. One knee grounded Andrew’s inner thigh to pin the leg while he attempted and failed to hook the other around Halse’s waist. Andrew reared up savagely but Sam dodged the headbutt, then slapped him open-handed with the full weight of his arm behind it. Andrew’s vision streamed with color. His ears rang. The burn seared from temple to jaw, spreading over the whole side of his face. As he reeled, Halse pinned his wrists, bringing them face to face.

“Fuck you for thinking I’d hurt him,” Halse said.

Andrew went performatively limp, wheezing. Sam slid his knee off the meat of his leg to kneel straddled over him. A fraction at a time, he released his grip on Andrew’s arms to settle at rest on his heels. Andrew scooted out from under him, still supine. The throbbing of his thigh ached worse than his face, radiating the phantom pain of Sam’s weight crushing muscle to bone. The smack was just shocking, unlikely to leave a mark but disorienting all the same. Tension dispersed as Halse stared at his hands. The blood streaking their skin and clothes belonged to neither of them.

Sam said, “You’re talking about actual murder. Not just someone messing with him, pushing him to off himself.”

Someone killed him, he thought with a shameful burst of relief. The nightmares he’d had, the revenant shaking him in its teeth like a dog with a bone, clicked into place: how many times had he been forced to see the ragged wounds, the blood pouring out? All that hadn’t been enough to quell a last miserable twang of uncertainty, raised through the lies and misdirection. Even after experiencing the desperation of Eddie reaching out to him at the end, he’d allowed himself to doubt—no surprise the haunt had pushed him, punished him.

“People don’t get fucking murdered often, Andrew. That’s a big jump from suicide. How can you be sure? You weren’t even here.”

Andrew hissed, “I just saw it. Believe me or don’t, I’m goddamn certain.”

“All right, then,” Sam said, disgruntled but—Andrew noticed Sam hadn’t stopped looking at his inexplicably bloodied hands—acquiescent.

In unspoken accord, Andrew took the hand Sam offered him a moment later. His ribs felt compressed. He spat a mouthful of phlegm on the ground. Sam lifted his own palm and examined the fresh print of red-black mud. The tiniest shiver shook his fingers. He wiped the evidence on his pants. Andrew remained at the tree as Sam took off for the path, tracing the initials one more time. Maybe days after he had died, Sam had stood here with his pocketknife and carved a spot to remember Eddie by.

At the car, Sam stood smoking. Two cigarette butts lay at his feet. The third glowed orange and crisp between his lips. Andrew plucked it from his mouth and burnt it to the filter with two hard drags that seared his lungs. Sam snorted and unlocked the car. Andrew considered the weight that had lifted from his shoulders, thinking: I guess I believe him. Neither of them spoke as each settled into their seats, prickly with the aftertaste of another physical boundary crossed.

Fifteen minutes into the quiet drive, Halse said, “I shouldn’t have been taking him on errands with me. I get that. If someone killed him, for real, then maybe I’m the one who set that off. He didn’t have the sense god gave a dog when it came to leaving people’s business buried.”

“Ethan told you I had questions,” Andrew said.

“He told us he took you out, and that you asked about me and Ed while you were rolling, how we got along and all,” he said. “You could’ve asked me. First time you met me, you could’ve just asked.”

“Not if you did something,” Andrew said.

“Glad you’ve got such a high opinion of me, Blur,” he said.

“I didn’t know you.” He shifted in the constriction of the seat, belt digging at his ribs. He wasn’t injured, but he was going to be bruised his whole time in Nashville at the rate he was going, wearing his hurt on his skin. “I might now, I guess.”

“Didn’t trust the drug dealer fuckup cousin after meeting the smart one, makes sense,” he said.

“It wasn’t like that.”

Halse drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. His bitter grin flashed white in the streetlights. “I’m not stupid. I know what I am and I know what I’m not. I guess I’d have pegged me for trouble too.”

The nakedness of that admission hit like stumbling into a friend’s bathroom without realizing they’d gotten in the shower. He hadn’t seen a thing, but he was too close to revelation.

“I didn’t kill him. But you’re saying someone did, fuck,” Sam marveled, horror and disbelief mingled in his voice, the same as they were inside Andrew’s chest—enormous, impossible, with awful certainty.

The interstate spread in front and behind them. Night descended in degrees. Andrew watched shadows grow in the divots of Sam’s wrists, his exposed collarbones. His belt buckle peeked from underneath the hem of his shirt.

“Ed was a good man,” Sam said. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about his extracurricular crazy shit, he did a bunch of things for Riley I couldn’t have, even if I worked at it for ten more years. I tried to do for him in exchange, but he made shit difficult.”