He feared for a moment that Gene had told them stories of his old friends who weren’t there for him anymore, who had run off, started families and left Gene behind with his dark and terrible secret. Perhaps those men at the bar were plotting his demise.
He saw Conner and Michael seated beside each other in a booth. A yellow pitcher of beer and several cups sat on the table. They were playing some kind of game like drunken frat boys, trying to flip one cup placed upside down at the edge of the table and have it land inside a second empty cup placed right-side up. It was one of those small competitions that drive brothers, and Jonathan watched as they kept trying over and over in rapid succession. Even after landing one inside the other, they kept going. Conner trying to gently and accurately hit his target with soft and subtle flips of his fingers, only forcing the cup into the air enough to clear the white lip and slide into position. Michael, much more forceful, flipping the plastic container higher into the air, causing it to spin end over end several times before either bouncing off the Formica-topped table or rumbling into its intended position like a nesting doll. They kept going and going at it like obsessives.
As kids, the Braddick brothers were better than nearly everyone else at small feats of accuracy and skill. Not athletes in the usual sense of the word, but rather savants at things most other people thought unworthy of practice. It made them great fun at parties. Conner would perform a card trick and Michael would dominate a drinking game. They were masters – not of games but of parlor tricks. Their funny little skills helped them slide into social circles, made them popular and well liked. Jonathan had tagged along for most of his life, ridden their coattails into adulthood. Personally, he never saw the point of these ridiculous little games.
But watching their cup-flipping at the booth reminded him of when they began to hunt together with Conner’s and Michael’s uncle when they were all in high school. Conner would fell a buck from two hundred yards with a light and fast bullet; Michael would put a shotgun slug in its heart from fifty feet away because he had baited the deer in with female scent and whistled so it perked its head, exposing its flank. They were good hunters. Jonathan was lucky if he got a doe the entire season, and Gene was largely along for the beer and camaraderie. But Conner and Michael took it seriously, as if it were the ultimate parlor trick – touch the trigger and poof! the deer has disappeared.
Even after all this time and all they had been through, Michael still hunted. He was the only one. For what reason he continued, Jonathan couldn’t understand. Maybe it was Michael’s ability to rationalize and compartmentalize life into little boxes and equations. For him it always seemed so simple, so mechanical. Fix the problem; no need to let the defective part affect the rest of the machine. With Conner, he was less sure. Conner had the ability to put something out of his mind enough to pretend it never happened in the first place. His ability to adjust and adapt meant that he was equally talented at covering things up that would impact his life and ambitions. Indeed, the whole cover-up was his idea. He had pushed it harder than anyone, supposedly in order to save their lives.
The Braddick brothers looked up as Jonathan sidled into the booth like a third wheel imposing on an exquisite date. They shook hands and nodded to each other like old business partners. The waitress brought another pitcher and Jonathan poured a cup. He glanced back at the bar and caught some latent stares. The owner of East Side was now behind the bar with arms crossed, watching them. No longer in their suits from the wake earlier in the evening, Jonathan and the Braddick brothers were dressed like every other man in the bar – heavy fabrics, denim and flannel, and old jackets that seemed stitched from burlap, worn when raking leaves on weekends or working on the car. They blended in perfectly, but still the others stared as if an aura of guilt hung over their heads – or maybe targets on their backs.
They quietly toasted their beers. The brothers were a bit drunker than they let on – Michael had a wet glaze over his eyes and Conner was slightly flushed. Jonathan sensed the opportunity to tie one on without judgmental eyes. He drank his beer fast and poured another. He looked at the brothers from across the table. “So. Is this some kind of tribute? A commiseration?”
“Something like that,” Michael said. Conner was busy tapping on his phone.
“How’s Annie doing?”
“She’s fine. Same old thing. New job, heading up HR. We stay busy.” Michael and Annie had married three years ago and had been trying to have children ever since. It was a small town and people talked. Although the men rarely spoke, all their respective wives stayed in
