my watch. My time was nearly up. Sunrise would soon be complete.
I moved around for another nervous fifteen minutes, and then at the back of the room I found a small, narrow box. It was under another box, a larger box. I found the little box because I knocked the bigger one over. It was full of Christmas decorations. I didn’t bother picking them up. I picked up the little box and glanced inside. The DVDs looked the same as the ones I had. They were numbered and there were maybe a dozen of them. Good God. How did the girl find the time? I figured I had maybe twenty-eight DVDs, counting those hidden in my apartment.
I carried the box out of the room and down the stairs and went out the back way. When I got outside sunlight was falling ripe over the steps, and by the time I changed shoes and got down to the creek bed it was morning.
Just before I went over the lip of the creek bed, down toward the culvert, my box of DVDs in hand, I looked back at the dome on the church. It glowed bright gold in the morning light, and for a moment, looking at it, you could almost believe in something bigger than humanity, more thoughtful and kinder than the Big Bang.
For a moment.
24
I made my way through the culvert without seeing my friend the water moccasin, and put the DVDs in the saddlebag on the motorcycle, folded up the cardboard box with a bit of effort and crunched it small enough to go into one of the saddlebags. I changed shoes again, and pushed the bike up the hill, then cranked it and rode out of there. I stuck the ski mask in my windbreaker pocket as I rode. The cool wind was still there, but there was starting to be a few worms of heat in it.
I was excited about my find, and I drove by Jimmy’s thinking of showing it to him, but I didn’t stop. Wasn’t any point. He would be asleep now, and if he wasn’t, Trixie would be, so there was nothing to do there. I drove around town, keyed up about what we had learned and about the DVDs I had in my saddlebags. They were just more of the same, but it made what the kids told us true, and somehow I found that satisfying. I think I was feeling high on my exploration as well. Knew then what gave the kids their charge, sneaking around in forbidden places.
I drove by Gabby’s office. It was way too early for her to be open, but I liked driving by anyway. Then I drove by her house because I couldn’t help myself. In times of excitement, depression or just plain confusion, the urge hit me. Every time I thought I had let it go, the need would come back again, like some deep-buried coal under a load of wet leaves; the coal flamed up and the leaves became dry, and pretty soon there were flames.
When I went by her address, I saw her car in the carport, and I saw something unexpected.
Jimmy’s motorcycle.
At first I thought it must be Gabby’s bike, because I didn’t want to think any other way, but I didn’t remember her riding bikes. I had ridden with Jimmy back then, him and Trixie, and Gabby had never wanted to ride herself, not control the bike anyway. She would ride on the back, her face pushed up against my back, but she never seemed to like it and was always glad when we stopped.
Perhaps she had changed in the years since we had been together. Maybe it was just me she didn’t want to ride with.
I stopped at the house down from Gabby’s, parked my bike at the curb and walked back. It was Jimmy’s bike all right. It still had the packed goods strung across the back of it. I tried to figure every reason in the world why it would be there, other than the reason that made the most sense. I took a deep breath, stepped back and kicked the bike so hard it fell over.
I went up her walk and pounded on her door. I pounded hard.
Time went by and I pounded again. The door was jerked open, and there was Gabby, her dark hair hanging over her shoulders, all fluffed as if she had just been jerked out of sleep, or something more dramatic. She wore blue pajama tops with blue bottoms with darker blue stripes. She had on blue fluffy house shoes, and when I saw her, my heart beat faster.
Jimmy came up behind her. He was still dressed in his camping clothes and he looked at me like I had been teleported there from Mars. I pushed past Gabby, and Jimmy said, “You don’t get it, Cason. Don’t, man.”
But I had him by the shirt then, and when I yanked I heard the shirt rip, and then I pulled him through the doorway and sort of slung him out in the yard. He got up, pushed both hands out at me. I slapped his arms down and hit him with a right hook on the side of the face. It knocked him down. Gabby yelled at me, something I didn’t quite hear, but nothing complimentary. She came running out then, squatted by Jimmy and lifted his head in her hands. When she spoke, she was so mad spittle flew.
“That’s it, Cason. That’s what I mean. That’s all you know. Fight and bully.”
“It’s all right,” Jimmy said. He moved as if to get up.
“You get up, I’ll knock you down again, Jimmy.”
“I’ve had it,” Gabby said. “I’m going to put out a restraining order. I don’t love you, Cason. I don’t even like you. I wish you had been killed over there. There, I’ve said it, and worst of all, I mean it.”
I couldn’t move for a moment. I looked at Jimmy. He was wiping blood off of his mouth with the back of his wrist.
“You are a piece of work,” I said to Jimmy.
“You’re the one who’s a piece a work,” Gabby said. “You’re crazy, Cason. Crazy.”
“Cason,” Jimmy started, but I was already walking away.
“Go on,” Gabby said. “Go on, and keep going. Don’t let me ever see you again. You’ll be hearing from someone. My lawyer, the cops, some-goddamn-body.”
I walked out to the street, and along it to where I had parked the motorcycle. I got on it, cranked it with a hard drop of the foot, then rolled out of there.
I pulled up outside Belinda’s place on the bike and sat at the curb, thought about what I was doing. Belinda deserved better than a frustrated, angry, lovesick puppy who wanted nothing more at the moment than to get laid. I looked at my watch. Still way early. I pushed the bike off and stomped the starter to life, rolled back to my place.
I had been there about fifteen minutes when there was a pounding on the door. I went to the window beside the door, pulled back the curtain and took a look. It was Jimmy.
I went to the door, called through it. “Go away, Jimmy.”
“Cason. You big asshole. You don’t know a thing. It wasn’t what you thought. I went over there for you.”
“I’m gonna have to get the hip boots out.”
“Come on, man. Do we have to keep talking through the door?”
“I don’t want to talk at all.”
“Come on. We’re brothers.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t. Come on. I’m your brother.”
“You been playing that card awful heavy lately. And did I mention I hate you?”
“Come on, now. I mean it, Cason. Let me in.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Pretty please?”
“Go on.”
Jimmy paused, then: “Cherry on top?”
I leaned against the door for a moment. There must be some inbuilt genetic thing that allows you, even expects you, to take abuse from siblings, because I unlocked the door and opened it. He came in. The motorcycle was inside again, in the same spot. He had to thread his way around it, and when he did, when he was close to me, I hit him again. It was a hard lick, a straight right, and he staggered back. I slipped forward and landed a left uppercut in his belly and he went down on one knee and started sucking air.
I think he said something foul to me, but with him breathing the way he was, for all I knew it could have been
