homosexuals before. Ellis would be the effeminate one. Dwayne was too bulky to play any role other than husband. Either way, the bickering between them made Brendan smile and he forgot for a moment his dad’s wails echoing in the bathroom and all the people milling around no longer discussing the tragedy of a bowling ball and a car but of a middle aged man under incredible stress. He was bound to break at some point, they reasoned.
Dwayne was up, hunched and touching his face like it might fall off. Ellis gave him the bloody handkerchief he had been using and told him to apply pressure to the gash. Dwayne tried and recoiled at the pain.
“Let’s go outside before these people start asking any questions,” Ellis said.
Dwayne nodded and they started out, the crowds parting wide for them. Brendan waited a moment and followed. He trailed them at a ten-foot distance to the parking lot where Ellis helped Dwayne into a large black car with white-wall tires. He shut the passenger door and turned to Brendan.
“I am very sorry about your sister, young man. God is a wonderful giver, but he is the cruelest taker.”
“Thanks.” Who were these guys? Why had they come here? “Do you know my father?”
Ellis thought about that. “In a way. We were summoned to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“God wanted us to intervene. So, we did.”
“That’s why my dad kicked his ass?”
Ellis squatted. “We saw your father last Saturday morning, a mere few hours before your sister died. Is that a coincidence?”
Brendan shrugged. How would he know? These guys had nothing to do with Delaney’s death, with that damn bowling ball.
“There are no coincidences. There is only God’s plan.”
“You’re preachers?”
He smiled. His many teeth comprised the mouth of a shark. Yet, Brendan was not scared. He was intrigued. Something about these men …
“Do you go to church?” Ellis asked. “Maybe with your father.”
“No. We go on Christmas Eve. That’s it. Catholic, I think.”
“Sounds like you’ve lost your way.”
“I thought I knew what I was doing,” Brendan said, slipping into his memory of last Saturday. “I thought that things would work out, that it was what needed to be done.”
“What do you mean?”
“The gods demanded a sacrifice.”
“Gods?”
He should be cautious; he could offend them, might have already. Dad beat Dwayne until he bleed and now Brendan could put the icing on that cake with his mythological gods who wanted Brendan to kill someone in order to protect his family. That hadn’t worked out, of course. All that capriciousness again.
“I guess I’m just really confused.”
Ellis was nodding. “I marvel at your sincerity. You’re a special boy.”
“That’s what your buddy said.”
“We’re from a church nearby. Do you want to see it?”
“Now?”
Alarms went off and Brendan’s brain switched into
“It won’t take long,” Ellis said.
“To a church?”
“You might find what you’re seeking.”
“Like what?”
“Answers.”
* * *
Brendan’s science teacher, Mr. Cantor, once explained in class how quickly a fire can consume a house; his own house had fallen victim to a garbage can full of smoldering ashes from the fireplace. “Fire rages rapidly,” Mr. Cantor said, “gobbling all the oxygen it can which, in turn, fuels the fire, making it larger and hotter.” In such moments, when people are forced to bear witness to awe-inspiring horror, many panic. That was why fire drills existed—if people practice enough for a horrible event then, hopefully, they would respond automatically when the real thing happens. However, sometimes people lose control. Sometimes they respond like animals.
“Animals,” Mr. Cantor said, “are excellent survivors, but they suffer fear just like us, and in a brutal fire, very often the animal tries to hide instead of flee. My cat hid behind the downstairs sofa when the fire erupted. I tried to find him and couldn’t. He died because he panicked, because he had no idea how to handle the fear.”
That memory of Mr. Cantor and his poor, dead cat came to Brendan as he listened to his father’s wails reverberate out of the funeral home and more and more people exited the building as if the wails were smoke; these people assembled on the wrap-around porch in small clusters. Dad’s eruption was the fire and Brendan was the cat. He needed to flee, not to hide.
“I don’t know,” Brendan said.
“It’s okay, son,” Ellis said. “God can wait a lifetime for you. But you need to ask yourself if you can wait a lifetime for Him.”
* * *
Brendan got in the car behind the driver’s seat. He hoped someone would notice this so that just in case these guys tied him up and left him for dead somewhere a witness could assist the police, but no one else was outside. They were all waiting for the fire to burn out.
They drove out of town toward the City of Newburgh. Brendan had been over here a few times when Mom and Dad took him to a restaurant on the Hudson River and he enjoyed his first taste of lobster. The river seemed more like an ocean, a dark one hiding all kinds of underwater creatures. Dad offered to rent a row boat and take him out; Brendan feigned illness and the excursion was delayed indefinitely.
Dwayne flipped down his visor and examined his face in the vanity mirror. He removed the handkerchief long enough for blood to resume flowing before reapplying pressure. “Son of a bitch, that hurts.”
Ellis tapped him on the knee and Dwayne’s eyes found Brendan’s in the mirror. He murmured an apology. “Your father caught me off guard, it’s no big deal.”
“What did you mean when you said God likes to test us?” Brendan asked.
Dwayne started to answer, stopped, flipped the visor back up.
“That is a loaded question to start with,” Ellis said. “It might be better first if you explained what
They drove down Broadway, which in no way resembled the bright lights and upbeat tempo of its New York City counterpart. In Newburgh, Broadway was wide and low with dying shops and wandering pedestrians. This was the place where people went to buy drugs at night or pick up hookers. During the day, people used the Laundromat and browsed the Thrift Shop. The locals ate the pizza and sandwiches at the places that sold cigarettes and potato chips on the same shelf. The visitors, like Brendan and his family, either dined at the upscale places that were hidden in this area like diamonds in coal or went down to the river where white college kids drank until they vomited on their shoes.
These guys could probably sell Brendan on the street or even exchange him for heroin or something. His father always made sure the car doors were locked on their trips out here. Why did he get in this car?
“Your church is on this street?”
“Newburgh was once the Crown Jewel of the Hudson Valley. Did you know that?”
“What happened?”
“Lots of things. Economic downturn, substance abuse. Mostly, a loss of faith.”
“In God?”
“In humanity.”
