The Unwilling(78)

That made no sense to the warden. X had never lost a fight, not like this. “Stay here,” he said. “No one in or out unless I say.”

Three days until he dies …

It was little enough, but Bruce Wilson had never been a courageous man. When his wife had first been assaulted, he’d planned to flee with his family, and pray to God he never saw X again. He’d been careful about it, too, buying tickets with cash and in secrecy, prepared to abandon everything but the people he loved.

Yet somehow, X had known.

As I recall, he’d said, you are from elsewhere in the South.

Mississippi. The Delta.

And your family has been there for some time?

As far back as memory goes.

I assume, then, that you are familiar with the brutal and once-common practice of hobbling recaptured slaves?

You mean…?

Broken ankles and shattered knees, severed tendons and amputated feet, all very gothic and antebellum …

I don’t understand.

I feel certain that you do.

Then X had placed a copy of the warden’s itinerary on the table.

Charlotte to Atlanta.

Atlanta to Sydney.

The warden remembered little after that but the hard run home and the sound of his smallest son screaming. They’d been in the kitchen—his entire family—and thinking back, he remembered the oddest things: the linoleum floor, curled in the corner, an open bottle of wine, and the smell of burning food. Try as he might, he could recall nothing of his wife’s face or of his older son, though both had been there. What had broken his heart then, and haunted him to exhaustion every day since, was the sight of his baby boy, but really just his legs, the narrow limbs with the scabbed knees, and how they bent at such impossible angles.

Choking on the memory, Warden Wilson moved down the corridor to the cell where the prison doctor stood above a bed, bending low to stitch a cut above X’s eye. Pretending calm, the warden asked, “How is he?”

The doctor grunted once, still working. “A mild concussion and maybe forty stitches. Go on, show him your teeth.”

“Tie off the stitch and get out.” If X was in pain, he didn’t show it. Shifting on the bed, he rose against the pillow, and laced his fingers on his chest. “How’s your family?”

The warden felt a wild panic, and tried to conceal it, pretending to watch the doctor as he gathered his things and left. “They’re fine,” he said.

“And your youngest?” X continued. “Trevor, I believe. How is young Trevor?”

The warden thought, Three days, that’s it, but couldn’t hide the anger. “The limp still troubles him. The pain is never distant.”

“You think me needlessly cruel.”

The warden straightened his spine, a moment of rare strength. “I do.”

“And if I wished to express some feeling of gratitude or remorse? If I told you that, would you believe me?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“I’m saying that in spite of our difficult start, you’ve been both fair and responsive. I’d like to reward that behavior.” X kept his gaze impassive. “How about three million dollars each for you, your wife, and your oldest son? Plus another five for Trevor, to compensate for the limp.”

The warden gaped; he couldn’t help it. “Fourteen million dollars?”

“Let’s make it twenty.”

The idea of such wealth made the warden feel faint. It meant a fresh start for him and his wife, better therapy for Trevor …

“I will require one last thing,” X said.

The warden swallowed the last morsels of pride and honor. “Tell me what you need.”

X did just that. He was very specific. “I assume you can manage the details?”

The warden said he could, and why not? After all the things he’d broken, all the men and lives and laws …

“I almost forgot,” he said. “Jason French has a visitor, his younger brother. Shall I turn him away?”

“Why would you do that?” X showed the broken teeth at last. “After all, there is nothing more important than family.”



* * *



That had once been true for X. As a child, he’d adored his parents. Even the younger sister made a fond memory, with her plump, round face and the way she’d liked to giggle. Those early years were like a dream: the mansions and travel, the great yachts and the fine chefs. His family’s special nature had been obvious from the beginning, clear in the respect men had for his father, the way they did as they were told, but stole glances at the beautiful, young wife. She would read stories to X of princes in faraway lands, and X was supposed to love those tales—he saw it in his mother’s eyes—but none of those make-believe princes lived a better life than X. The world was a kingdom, his father a king.

When X was eight years old, he burned his finger on a birthday candle, and the fascination with fire began. At first, it was a small thing: matches and cardboard and melted plastic. By his next birthday, though, the dreams he had were not of candles but of conflagration. He used his father’s gold lighter to start his first real fire, a blaze that took ten acres of woodland from the Charleston estate. The second fire was a neighbor’s car. Fifty thousand dollars, they said, a collectible; and he’d done it with a single match.