Envy the Night

directly to him; other times it just showed in their eyes. Poor kid. Imagine having such a monster for a father. The problem, though, the one that Frank saw and nobody else ever could, was that he’d been a good father. Was a murderer, sure, got paid for it, yes, but while that might be enough to define him for the rest of the world, it didn’t work for Frank. Didn’t replace seventeen years of love. He was a good father. Frank wished he hadn’t been, at times. Wished that he’d come home drugged out and violent, knocked Frank and his mother around, threatened the neighbors, that he’d done all of those things that a murderer should do in his own home—but he hadn’t. He’d been quick with a joke and a kind word, supportive, interested. When Frank was eleven years old and struck out with the bases loaded to end his Little League team’s season, his father had held him in the car as he’d cried in shame and said, “Don’t worry, kid, next year we’ll cork your bat,” and the tears had turned to laughter.

Even those lessons in the basement—which the TV people had fixated on and manipulated to make his father even more of a monster, this man who would ruin a child with violence—they’d been the products of love. His father had seen a different world than most, a world of constant violence. He was preparing his son to go into it, that was all. Saw no other way to raise him than to make him ready for the worst.

“Welcome back.”

The voice came from just over his shoulder. Frank’s only thought as he whirled to face the speaker was that the man had approached in total silence. It was that realization almost more than the voice that allowed him to place his visitor.

“Uncle Ezra?”

A child’s nickname, but it was the first thing that entered his mind. The man stepped closer, out of the darkness, and offered his hand.

“Good to see you, Frank.”

Frank got to his feet and accepted the handshake. He was taller than Ezra by several inches, and though he had been since he was in his teens, it still surprised him. The man was bigger in his memory, and quiet and capable, with a habit of sliding out observations that would be the envy of any late-night comedian, delivered in the same slow, soft voice, the jokes usually coming and going before anyone realized what had been said and got to laughing.

“You given up on motorized travel?” Frank said, waving a hand at the dark woods from which Ezra had emerged. Hell of a way to make an appearance.

“Nice night for a walk.”

Anyone else would have started with the questions then: When had he arrived, why didn’t he call to say he was coming, how long would he be staying? Ezra offered none of them, though, just settled onto a stump beside Frank and said, “Cabin was in good shape.” A statement of fact, but one he wanted Frank to acknowledge.

“Of course,” Frank said, and he sat, too.

“You intending to let this fire go out?”

It was close to going out, though Frank hadn’t noticed that as he’d sat alone with his beer and his memories.

“Uh, no. I just—”

Ezra knelt beside the fire pit and adjusted the wood, fed a few fresh logs into the pile. The flames licked at the fuel and grew, the glow lighting Ezra until he stepped back, satisfied, and returned to his stump. Frank was staring into the fire, but Ezra sat sideways, so his eyes were never directly on the flames. Frank had asked his father about that once years ago. He doesn’t face the fire because he wants to keep his night vision, his dad had said. It’s an old habit, buddy. One that lingers.

“Boat’s in the shed,” Ezra said, “but I took the motor off and put it in the cabin.”

“I saw that.”

“Figured the shed might make an easier target if somebody wanted to break in. But I come around enough that most people know better.”

“Yeah. I appreciate that.”

“Hell,” Ezra said, poking at the fire with his boot. It got quiet after that, just the fire popping and hissing and the trees creaking in a steady wind. There’d been loons when Frank was a kid, lots of them, but tonight he had yet to hear one of those haunting calls. He’d been up in the summer on every trip but one. That year, they came in the dead of winter for a weekend of ice fishing. Frank had been prepared for a long, cold tramp over the ice to a small hole you sat beside on an overturned bucket or a stool. Instead, Ezra had driven them out onto the lake in a half-ton pickup truck, driven right across the frozen water without any hesitation. Frank, sitting between the two men, the gearshift banging against his knees, had been sure that the ice would break somewhere out in the middle of the lake, swallow them up, Frank finishing his run as a twelve-year-old blue corpse. The ice had held, though, and Ezra’s fishing shanty was small but warm. They’d pulled northern and bluegill out of the ice, and his father and Ezra had told stories while sipping bourbon-laced coffee.

“I got your message,” Frank said. A fast tremor was working in his chest, just the thought of Devin out there on the island enough to build the anger.

“That seems to have been a mistake.”

It was silent, and then Frank said, “What kind of mistake?”

“He’s not here,” Ezra said.

“Devin.”

“Anybody else you’d be asking about? Yes, Devin. He’s not up here, Frank.”

“But somebody is?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

Ezra hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a man and a woman and they’re both strangers to me. Might be Devin’s renting the place.”

Frank felt that tremor fade away, something—was it disappointment?—taking the anger’s place. It was crazy to be disappointed, though. Crazy. Because if he’d wanted Devin up here, then what, exactly, had he been hoping for? There was an answer to that one, and he didn’t want to dwell on it. Couldn’t let it into his mind for even a minute. Grady had told him that many times.

“It’s good to see you,” Frank said, and though he’d spoken mostly to fill the silence and take his mind away from Devin, the words were true.

“You ain’t kidding, son. Been a long time.”

“Going to be tough,” Frank said. “Being up here.”

Ezra didn’t look at him. “I would imagine so.”

Frank, who just moments earlier had been so grateful that Ezra wasn’t talking about his father, suddenly wanted to. What the hell did you say, though?

“Good memories, up here,” he offered. “Less so in other places. But up here, mostly good.”

“He wasn’t a bad man, son. Wasn’t a perfect one, either, but he damn sure wasn’t the way they made him out to be.”

“Tell that to the families of the people he killed,” Frank said, and he was surprised by the weariness in his own voice, the aged sound.

He finally heard a loon then. It cut loose from somewhere across the lake, the sound unlike anything else, riding the wind across the water to their campfire. He thought maybe they were both grateful for it. Something to listen to, something to stop a conversation that was going nowhere good.

“Like I said, I’m glad to see you, Ezra. Don’t want to make you have conversations like that. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be,” Ezra said. “And I think you do want to. Be surprised if you didn’t, at least.”

Frank didn’t respond to that. He was stuck in a memory, another night around another fire with his father and Ezra. He’d been fifteen at the time, and his father decided to show off some of the tricks he’d worked so hard to teach his son, show off those unholy fast hands. Watch this, he’d said to Ezra, watch how damn quick he is. They’d gone through the usual routine, his father with the gun and Frank trying to take it, or maybe the other way around. He didn’t remember the details of that night’s game anymore, just remembered that when Ezra had said, Yeah, you’re real fast, kid, his voice was sad and he wouldn’t look at either of them.

“I thought it was a bad idea, calling you,” Ezra said. “I’d promised to do it, but I still thought it was a bad idea.”