We Begin at the End(2)

Down Genesee, where Walk still lived in his parents’ old house. Onto Ivy Ranch Road, where the Radley home came to view. Peeling shutters, an upturned bike, the wheel lying beside. In Cape Haven a shade beneath perfect might as well have been black.

Walk broke from the children and ran up the path, no lights from inside but the flutter of television. Behind, he saw Robin still crying and Duchess still looking on, hard and unforgiving.

He found Star on the couch, a bottle beside, no pills this time, one shoe on and the other foot bare, small toes, painted nails.

“Star.” He knelt and patted her cheek. “Star, wake up now.” He spoke calmly because the children were at the door; Duchess, an arm on her brother as he leaned so heavy into her, like he no longer held bones in his small body.

He told the girl to dial 911.

“I already have.”

He thumbed open Star’s eyes and saw nothing but white.

“Will she be alright?” The boy’s voice.

Walk glanced over, hoping for sirens, squinting at fired sky.

“Could you go look out for them?”

Duchess read him and took Robin outside.

Star shook then, puked a little and shook, like God or Death had hold of her soul and was wrenching it free. Walk had given it time, three decades had passed since Sissy Radley and Vincent King but still Star slurred about eternalism, the past and the present colliding, the force spinning the future off, never to be righted.



Duchess rode with her mother. Walk would bring Robin.

She looked on as the medic worked. He did not try a smile and for that she was grateful. He was balding and sweating and maybe tiring of saving those so determined to die.

For a while they stayed in front of the house, the door falling open to Walk, there like always, his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin needed that, the comfort of an adult, the perception of safety.

Across the street drapes moved as shadows passed silent judgment. And then, at the end of the road, she saw kids from her school, pedaling hard, faces red. News moved so fast in a town where zoning often made front pages.

The two boys stopped near the cruiser and let their bikes fall. The taller, breathless, a sweep of hair plastered down as he walked slow toward the ambulance.

“Is she dead?”

Duchess lifted her chin, met his eye and held it. “Fuck off.”

The engine rumbled as the door swung closed. Smoked glass made matte of the world.

Cars snaked the turns till they tipped from the hill, the Pacific behind, rocks broke the surface like heads of the drowning.

She watched her street till the end, till trees reached over and met on Pensacola, branches like hands, linked in prayer for the girl and her brother, and the unfurling tragedy that began long before either was born.



Night met others just like it, each swallowing Duchess so totally she knew she would not see day again, not the way other kids saw it. The hospital was Vancour Hill and Duchess knew it too well. When they took her mother she stood on the polished floor, light mirrored up, her eye on the door as Walk brought Robin inside. She walked over and took her brother’s hand, then led him toward the elevator where she rode to the second floor. The family room, lights dimmed, she pushed two chairs together. Across was a supply room and Duchess helped herself to soft blankets and then made the chairs into a cot. Robin stood awkward, the tired dragging him, haunting dark circled his eyes.

“You need to pee?”

A nod.

She led him into the bathroom, waited a few minutes then saw he washed his hands well. She found toothpaste, squeezed a little onto her finger and ran it around his teeth and gums. He spit, she dabbed his mouth.

She helped him out of his shoes and over the arms of the chairs, where he settled like a kind of small animal as she covered him over.

His eyes peered out. “Don’t leave me.”

“Never.”

“Will Mom be okay?”

“Yes.”

She cut the television, the room dark, emergency lighting left them in red, soft enough that he slept by the time she reached the door.

She stood in clinical light, her back to the door; she would not let anyone inside, there was another family room on three.

An hour and Walk appeared again and yawned like there was cause. Duchess knew of his days, he drove Cabrillo Highway, those perfect miles from Cape Haven to beyond, each blink a still of such paradise people crossed the country to find them, buy their homes and leave them empty ten months of the year.

“Is he asleep?”

She nodded once.

“I went to check on your mother, she’ll be alright.”

She nodded again.

“You can go and grab something, a soda, there’s a machine next to—”

“I know.”

A look back into the room saw her brother sleeping soundly, he would not move until she stirred him.

Walk held out a dollar bill, she took it reluctantly.

She walked the corridors, bought the soda and didn’t drink it, she would keep it for Robin when he woke. She saw into cubicles, sounds of birth and tears and life. She saw shells of people, so empty she knew they would not recover. Cops led bad men with tattooed arms and bloodied faces. She smelled the drunks, the bleach, the vomit and shit.

She passed a nurse, a smile because most of them had seen her before, just one of those kids, dealt a losing hand.