The Unwilling(8)
“None of this is fair, son. It’s not fair that Robert died, or that Jason changed the way he did. It’s not fair for your mother to worry so much, or for any of this to land on you. Just work with me. Stay away from Jason, at least for a little while.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I know he is, but there are things about Jason you don’t know.”
“What? That he did drugs? That he killed people in the war?”
My father frowned and studied the floor, less certain than he used to be. “Three or four days, just a little while.”
“You should have told me he was back.”
“You’re angry. I get it. I still need your promise.”
“I can’t give it to you.”
“Not even for your mother’s sake?”
“Not even for yours.”
I stared at him, and he stared back; and in the end, that’s where he left me: in a silence that spoke of fathers and sons and difficult truths. I couldn’t turn my back on Jason, not after losing Robert.
I thought my father understood.
That maybe he approved.
* * *
French stopped ten feet from the door, and took a moment to remember his sons as they’d been before the war: Robert, with his easy smile and gracious nature, and Jason, who’d been sardonic and brilliant and occasionally cruel. From the beginning, Gibby’s love for Robert had been the most obvious, but he’d been more like Jason than he chose to admit. He had the same insight and self-awareness, the same cutting wit. Gibby’s heart, of course, was immense, and the only reason he’d yielded, for so many years, to his mother’s insane demands. No girls. No sports.
“Damn it, Gabrielle.”
Rationality played no part in her overprotective nature. Robert had been selected in the draft, with Jason being spared only because he’d been born two minutes after midnight, which made them twins with different birthdays. Gabrielle had wept on the day Robert left for Vietnam, and broken entirely at news of his death. He’d been the first and the favorite. Gabrielle would never admit such a truth, but her cries in the dark of that terrible night still haunted his memories.
It should have been Jason!
It should have been him!
He’d tried to stifle the words, but believed, to this day, that they’d carried through the house. How long after that before Jason enlisted?
Two days?
Three?
French sighed deeply, and his face was rough beneath his palms. Pushing away from the wall, he made his way to the master bedroom door and peered inside. Gabrielle was in the bed, on her side. Moving quietly past, he lifted his weapon and shield from the dresser.
“Are you going out?” She rolled over, a rustle in the sheets.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
“Gibby’s in bed?”
“Tucked in and safe.”
“Where are you going?”
“A call,” he said. “I might be a while.”
“What time is it?”
“Not that late. Go back to bed.”
He kissed her cheek, and she rolled again, showing the lift of a shoulder, a spill of hair. He felt bad about the lie, but had she known his intent, there would have been recrimination and tears; she would not have slept at all.
Outside, French slid behind the wheel, and followed a two-lane until he caught the state highway that would take him into Charlotte. As a city cop, he’d always felt guilty about life beyond the city line, but he was a father first, and city life had been trending down for years. It would be easy to blame the war, but the shift felt more fundamental than that. People didn’t care like they used to. They locked their doors, and looked away on the street. There was less trust between neighbors, and no love for cops, either. It had been that way since the Kent State shootings, at least, since the race riots in New York and Wilmington, the uprisings at Attica, the bombing in Wisconsin. Even in a city as small as this—a half-million people—French had seen things he’d never imagined, not just the protests and riots but bra burnings and flag burnings, the explosion of homelessness and poverty and drugs. To jaded eyes, the problem was larger than broken families or loyalties or even broken cities. The country was wounded and hurting. Was divided too big a word?
Once across the city line, French worked his way past the subdivisions and commercial areas, then downtown, where buildings rose twenty and thirty stories, and people were out on the sidewalks. The restaurants were busy, so were the nightclubs and bars. The main drag was four-lane, and cars cruised it slowly before turning around to do it again. His interest was little more than passing, but eyes still found the cruiser as if cop were written on the side.
Deeper in the city, French slowed as he approached a half-mile stretch of abandoned factories built in the late 1800s. An experiment in city renewal had seen attempts at rehabilitation, but the longed-for influx of apartment and condo dwellers never materialized. The buildings now were mostly vacant. There were a few flophouses, some struggling artists, a bit of industrial storage. The building he wanted was on the last corner of the worst block, so he rolled in quietly, and got out of the car the same way. Darkness pooled between distant lights, and there was movement in that darkness, hints of glass and cigarettes where people huddled on loading bays and crumbled stoops.