I could hear a pulsing of blood in my ears. It was loud, and pretty distracting.
“I don’t know what NA is.”
“Like AA, but for drugs.”
“What’s the N stand for?”
“Narcotics.”
“Oh.” I sat quietly for a minute. Then I said, “Is this because he’s taking too many of those pain pills? Because I think maybe he just got high on them and forgot how many he was supposed to take.”
“Nah,” Darren said. “It’s not about that.”
I wondered if I wanted to ask what it was about. Then I wondered if not asking would keep me safe from Darren’s telling me anyway.
“He’s only been home since yesterday,” I said.
I think I was fighting back against the idea that Roy needed to go to meetings. In fact, I’m sure I was. I wanted Darren to be mistaken about that.
“This is not about what he’s been doing since he got home. It’s about what he did over there. Guys pick up stuff over there. It happens a lot. Because stuff’s easy to get, and because it makes everything almost bearable. It’s usually a situational thing. Guy needs it till he gets home. Then he doesn’t need it anymore.”
“Maybe he won’t need it anymore,” I said.
“Well. Thing is, he might’ve said something to suggest he’s one of the ones who can’t put it down without help.”
“What did he say?”
It was a brave question. But I think I figured if I knew, I could find a flaw in Darren’s conclusion.
“He asked me if I knew how to get ’im any.”
“Oh,” I said.
I couldn’t find a flaw in that.
We sat in silence for a time. And the silence had a burn to it. I wasn’t sure if it was a temporary break in our conversation, or if we were just waiting for his cab to pull up and honk.
“Did you pick up stuff over there?” I asked.
It was another bold question. But I needed to know.
“I did,” he said.
“But then you set it down when you got home?”
“I did, yeah. But not everybody can. And it doesn’t make me bigger or stronger or braver or better. Different people have different reactions to things. That’s all.”
“What if he won’t go with me?”
“Then you call me up and tell me, and I’ll come over and help you sort things out. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. But it sounded like a lot of responsibility.
We sat in silence for a while longer. And, in that silence, I stepped back in time in my head. Back to before Roy came home. When I’d thought everything would be so simple. I’d thought Roy would just come home, and then everything would be great.
I think I grew up a lot in that moment.
“How old are you now?” he asked, knocking me out of my thoughts.
“Fourteen.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Four years. Maybe we’ll be out of that damn war by then. But if not . . . well, you’ll have to make up your own mind what to do. You can’t just do what I think you should do. But I’ll tell you this. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t go.”
“I have a choice?”
“Everybody has choices. Always. Just, sometimes they don’t like ’em. You can go where the draft board sends you. Or you can go to Canada. Or you can go to jail. If you ask me, jail is the more honorable way to go. You can look the guys who did fight straight in the eye and say, ‘Yeah, I sacrificed, too. I didn’t have it easy.’ But think carefully before you get yourself into a thing like a war.”
“Maybe it’ll be over by then,” I said. Which had already been said. So it would’ve been more honest to say, “Oh dear God, please let it be over by then.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but just then his cab honked in the driveway. And that was it for our visit.
I knew when my mom was home because I heard her holler my name. I don’t usually use the word “holler.” But in this case it feels like the only one that’ll do.
“Lucas!”
I came to the railing on the second-floor landing and looked down, wondering what I had done wrong this time.
“What?”
She looked up at me, her face livid. If my life had been a cartoon, she would’ve had smoke coming out of her ears.
“What did you do?” she shouted.
She had a pill bottle in her hand that I could only assume was Roy’s medication. She held it up as Exhibit A in the trial that would likely end with my death penalty.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I didn’t touch it.”
“Four pills missing! Four! You think I don’t count them? I know he didn’t walk down the stairs by himself and get them.”
“Oh,” I said. In that ugly moment the truth stretched out in front of me like a mile of bad road. One I would have no choice but to navigate. “He . . . we . . . I helped him come downstairs. Because Darren Weller came by to see him. It would’ve been harder for Darren to get up the stairs than for Roy to get down them. I never thought about the pills. I’m sorry.”
She peered up at me for a moment. Her anger seemed to be draining away, but I swear she looked as though she was trying to keep it.
“I’m hiding these where only I know where they are.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
Sooner or later he was going to ask me to get him some. And when I said I didn’t know where they were, I wanted it to be the truth.
She narrowed her eyes at me. Trying to figure me out, I guess.
