The Running Girls(11)
The sky was a rolling canvas of gray and white as they drove along Seawall Boulevard. Randall hadn’t returned here since that first day back on the island. He welcomed his relative solitude in his house, but it was good to see people now and again. As the landscape scrolled by, he snuck glimpses of families strolling across the promenade, lovers hand in hand, a group of young men unloading their jeeps so they could fish on the jetty, and was reminded how he had become an outsider in his own town.
“Remind me where we’re going, Maurice,” he said, as they stopped at a crossing.
“My home,” said Maurice, his eyes not moving away from the pedestrians walking in front of the windshield. “My church.”
Again, Randall was struck by how little he knew about his brother. He recalled he was a preacher, but had no idea where he lived, or even what denomination he was. They had never been a particularly religious family growing up. Their father had been a quiet man who worked offshore for most of the year. Randall recalled going with his mother to a church as a very young boy, though he wasn’t sure he could trust his memories. They were always picture-perfect snapshots. Beautiful, cloudless summer days where everyone was smiling, the men in their pressed suits, the women in their glorious flower-patterned dresses. Without fail, his memories from those formative times were tinged with happiness, even though that had all changed when his mother left.
He didn’t ask for any more details. As Maurice headed over the causeway, Randall’s energy began to fade and the pull of sleep became too much to deny. He closed his eyes and when he awoke an unknown time later, he was disoriented. “Where are we going?” he said, feeling ridiculous for asking such a question.
If Maurice was surprised, he hid it well. His crinkled face kept staring ahead, unblinking gray eyes fixed on the endless highway. “You’re coming to stay with me for a few days, brother.”
Randall had given up drinking long before his stay in prison, but the way he felt now reminded him of the fugue of inebriation. His reality was distorted. A little too real to be dreamlike, but distorted nonetheless. “I can’t stay long,” he told his brother. “I have my delivery soon.”
Maurice nodded and kept driving.
The sky was darkening as they arrived at a small town on the outskirts of Dickinson, Maurice driving his truck up the pathway leading to a wood-paneled church.
“You live in a church?” said Randall, forgetting for a second that his brother was a preacher.
“I might as well. My place is at the back. Welcome to St. Saviour’s.”
Randall opened the truck door and swung his damaged knee down from it with a grimace. He missed his little place more than he’d have imagined he ever could, and searched for the memory telling him how long he’d agreed to stay here.
Maurice carried his bag to the small house to the rear of the church.
“You’re still a preacher.”
“Pastor Randall. Kind of catchy, ain’t it?”
It didn’t sound right to Randall’s ears. Randall had been his only name for all those years on the inside, and it sounded wrong on another man, even if it was his brother.
As Maurice led him inside to the spare bedroom and invited him to freshen up, he recalled a time as children when Maurice had given him a beating for sneaking into his room one summer evening and going through his things.
“You need to do any stretching for that leg of yours?” said Maurice, standing in the doorway as if guarding an exit.
“It’ll be fine,” he said, sucking in the pain as he sat on the soft bed.
“Yep,” said Maurice, shutting the door behind him.
Randall fought the urge to try the door, reminding himself that he was no longer in prison, but a guest in his brother’s house. Still, it was hard staying in the room. There was a peculiar, unnerving silence, Randall straining his ears to hear anything beyond the hum from the bare light bulb above the bed.
Had they visited here once before? Him and Annie? It seemed like the kind of thing they may have once done, but he’d be damned if he could remember. How I wish she was here now, he thought, picturing her smile, her long red hair swept behind her shoulders, before a second picture came to mind. Annie’s body close to the stagnant water, the strange way her body had been positioned almost as if she were running, the cruel breaks that had been made to her legs.
“Dinner’s ready.”
The sound of Maurice’s voice jolted Randall. He couldn’t tell if he’d fallen asleep or not, his mind still in its fugue-like state as he pushed himself off the mattress. He swore he could hear the sound of his knee creaking as he made his way along the wooden floorboards of the hallway to an ostentatious dining room, where Maurice was already sitting behind a table large enough to accommodate ten or twelve people.
“You live alone here?” he asked, taking the nearest seat to his brother.
“I have to entertain,” said Maurice, with a smirk. “Bible study class, church association meetings, that sort of thing.”
Randall lifted his flatware and was about to start eating when Maurice stopped him.
“May we say grace?”
“Sorry, sure,” said Randall, heat reaching his face. Like so many things in his present life, grace was now an old concept. Although he and Annie had rarely visited church, saying grace was one thing she’d insisted on. “It’s good to give thanks,” she’d say. “Even if we don’t know who exactly we’re thanking.”