The Unwilling(5)

“Really?”

“In part, yeah.”

“What does that mean, in part?”

I disliked needless lies, so I shook my head, then turned from the edge, and started walking to the trail that would take us down. Chance followed, still worried.

“Dude, wait. What does that mean?”

I kept quiet, unwilling to share the conviction he’d put inside me. It was powerful and strange, and made me drunk with possibility.

Me alone, I thought.

Me alone when I dive …



* * *



It wasn’t the first time Chance and I had walked the long trail down. We followed the slope east and then switchbacked through the trees, coming out a quarter mile later on the far side of the quarry, where people parked their cars. Walking to the edge of the field, we stood and looked down. Chance nudged me. “She’s on the beach to your left.”

“I wasn’t looking for her.”

“Yeah, right.”

Becky saw me and waved. A squad of guys surrounded her, football players, mostly. One of them saw me looking, and spit on the cracked, granite ledge that passed for a beach.

Chance said, “Come on. Let’s find a beer.”

We turned for the trail that would take us to the water, but saw movement in a shaded place beneath the pines. A man was squatting with his back against the trunk, and his head shifted as he ground a cigarette into the dirt. “I caught your performance. Thought for a minute you might actually do it.” He stood, and moved into the light: black hair and denim and prison-pale skin. “Hello, little brother.”

Jason was five years older, but my size and shape. The same hair brushed the collar of his shirt. The same eyes stared out from a face that was similar in every way but the hard edges of it. “You’re out,” I said, and he shrugged. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, believe it or not.”

A pint bottle appeared from his back pocket. He unscrewed the cap and offered me a sip. When I shook my head, he shrugged and tipped the bottle back.

“You remember Chance,” I said.

“Hello, little man.” Chance bridled at the mocking tone, and Jason stood there looking unconcerned and dangerous and bored. “Why didn’t you make the dive?” I shrugged stupidly, and Jason nodded as if he understood. “It was something to see, though, wasn’t it?”

He was talking about the day our brother dove. Robert had been the kindest and my favorite. “Have you been home?” He shook his head. “You going?”

“After last time? I don’t think so.”

His grin, then, was the first truly familiar thing I’d seen. It had a sharp edge on one side, and the eye above it dipped in a quick wink. If Jason liked you, the wink said, Life is good, I’ve got your back. For others, it was different. Even in high school, grown men would back away from the wink and the grin, and that was before war and death and whatever devil Vietnam put inside my brother. He was calm at the moment, but that could change on a dime. Indian summer. Killing frost. Jason had both of those things inside, and they could trade places plenty fast.

He lit another cigarette, and I watched him do it, hating how much he looked like our dead brother. Were Robert here instead of Jason, he’d have wrapped me up, laughing. He’d have squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe, then he’d have pushed me back, mussed my hair, and said, My God, look how you’ve grown. I often wondered if war had changed him as it changed Jason. Was he harder in those last days? Or was it Robert’s goodness that got him killed in the end, some softness that my other brother lacked?

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Jason asked.

“I don’t know. Hanging out, I guess.”

“Let’s do it together, the two of us. You have a car. I know some girls.” He smiled around the cigarette, then pulled in smoke and streamed it through his nostrils. “Robert and I used to do that, you know. Back roads and cold beers, life before the war. What do you say? It could be like old times.”

“What girls?” I asked.

“This guy.” Jason hooked a thumb, and looked at Chance. “What does it matter, what girls? You don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that…”

I hesitated, and Jason’s grin faded. “Don’t say it’s our mother.”

“You know how she is.”

“You’re going to bail on a day with two fine women and your long-lost brother because it might upset our mother?”

“You’re not around, man. You don’t see how she gets.”

“Let me guess. Demanding? Judgmental?”

“I’d call it overprotective.”

Jason shook his head, and pulled hard on the bottle. “You don’t think Robert would want us to be in each other’s lives? You don’t think that, deep down, even Dad thinks it’s wrong, the way she keeps us apart? But hey, you know what? It’s cool.” He flicked the cigarette, and showed the brightest, coldest eyes I’d ever seen. “If you’re not man enough…”

“Don’t say that, Jason.”

“Man enough. Grown enough.”

“Screw you, dude.”

He grinned again, and looked at the cliff. “If you were man enough, you’d have made the dive. You used to be a tough little nut. You remember that? How that felt?”