Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“The kiss,” I said.

“I hate to tell you this, Terrier, but just in case you haven’t realized it yet, your brother is out of his goddamn mind. Anytime you get too curious about what was going on in his head, remember where that kind of thinking leads. You really want to start down that road?”

Gilmore stood. I could tell he wanted to shake my hand or give me a hug. His eyes were full of regret and remorse and a hope toward friendship. He walked away and took his fucked little grin with him out the door.

Like the last lone soldier defending a fort, my father stood guard on our house. He leaned against the veranda railing. Backlit by the porch light, he was lent a kind of mythic presence. He had the grave bearing of someone thinking hard on a particular subject. He showed no sign of restlessness at all, but I knew it was there. Maybe his tension was merely calling to my own.

Pinscher Rand had become a criminal for the same reason that I had. Because he’d been born to it. I wondered if he ever pulled a cheap score nowadays just to keep the old skills sharpened and to remember how exciting and awful it had once been. I imagined him picking a wallet and not pulling the money, just poking around the contents, looking at the driver’s license photo, the credit cards, the carefully folded sheets of paper that rarely made any sense. A note from an ex-girlfriend that the mark valued, a frayed motto or private joke that had gone through the wash a couple of times. He’d pass by a mailbox and dump the wallet in. He’d feel some strange sense of accomplishment, knowing his fingers were still supple enough to get the job done.

He should’ve been a carpenter. It was the only other skill that was in the Rand blood. Maybe I should have been too. I imagined us razing the house and building another one, a smaller one, without the hidden caches, maybe with a nursery.

I wondered what he did with himself now that he’d quit creeping houses. What shit he wasted his time on. He and my mother should be out enjoying themselves, making the most of life. Except thaep d guay"›t I knew the burden of the murders tore him up with guilt in a way that none of his own crimes ever had. My father hid himself away out of shame.

JFK lay across the top stair and I had to jump over him. My side hurt so badly that I almost flubbed it. He gave me a resolute eye roll and coughed out a small belly bark.

I lit a cigarette and sat in a chair, trying to hide my discomfort. It was too late. My old man had already noticed.

“Someone worked you over,” he said.

“I’m okay.”

“Not Dale’s boyfriend?”

I frowned. “Hell, no.”

“Didn’t think that one would get over on you.”

“Not likely.”

He nodded, took a step toward me, and looked me deep in the face like he was checking for bruises. “That’s not what’s on your mind, though.”

“No, Dad, it’s not.”

My father sat, opened his cooler, and handed me a beer. I shook my head. He dug around in the ice chest until he came up with a small carton of orange juice. I drank and felt a little better.

We relaxed and watched the road and the black brush beyond it. JFK had picked up on my mood. He came over, circled and pawed and collapsed. His ears kept snapping up and he let loose with a deep-throated whine. I wanted to do the same.

We nodded. We sipped. We smoked. We took turns patting the great beast at our feet who’d once been young and fierce and was now only well muscled, noble, and old. The immense topic of our lives loomed between us.

We’ve failed. We’ve failed to hold our family together. We’ve failed to protect one another .

My old man started to clear his throat like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the proper words. I turned and watched him until our eyes met.

He said, “You want to talk about it, Terry?”

I sat up like someone had just lobbed a grenade. It was a question that my father never asked. I thought, Christ, I must look really bad.

Or maybe it was just his way of getting me to start a conversation that he himself needed to have.

I listened to my mother inside murmuring to Gramp, the way new parents talk to infants. She sounded elated. I waited for her to say, “Look at these chubby cheeks. Who’s got such chubby cheeks? So big!” I thought about the toll it must be taking on her. If ten years ago Gramp had been able to see himself in this state, he would’ve put one in his head. Another one, that is.

Clouds swarmed the moon. JFK got up and wandered down to the lawn, parading back and forth like a fitful ghost.

I said, “Collie says he didn’t strangle the girl. He says someone else did it and that they’ve racked up at least four or five other murders before and after he was arrested. He says the killer is targeting young women of the same description. He wants me to look into it with his wife.”

My father waited. The information sank in. “His wife?”

“He got married in prison.”

“To a guy?”

It almost made me smile. “No, to a pen pal.”

“O19;tify"›I ne of those,” my father said with a disgusted nuance. “Celebrity stalkers, but they only like the mass murderers. They’re just as psychotic.”

“He says she’s been trying to help him. Gathering evidence, I suppose.”

He waited. “If it was anybody else I’d say it was a ploy to get a stay of execution, an appeal, or a new trial.”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t want any of that, he says. He just wants me to find out who’s killing these women. He doesn’t even want his own name cleared of that one killing.”

“So why’s he care? Why now?”

“He says it’s because he wasn’t certain if he’d killed the girl or not, but now his wife’s been bringing him information and he knows for sure there’s someone else out there.”

“He’s manipulating you.”

“I get that feeling too, but I can’t see any reason for it.”

“Your brother doesn’t need a reason to do things anymore. Maybe he never did.”

“Does Fingers Brown still sell clean pieces?” I asked.

“Haven’t heard much about him in a while. But I can’t picture him retiring and doing a lot of fishing.”

“Still got the bowling alley?”

“As far as I know. You’re going to pay him a visit?”

“I want to ask him a few questions.”

My old man finished his beer and took another, held the bottle to his chest. “You’ve decided to help Collie?”

“It’s for me. I want to figure out as much as I can about what happened.”

He went to the porch railing, stood against it, and looked at the moon. “Can you let it go?”

“No.”

He was a sensitive and astute man, but I was still surprised that he was able to slice to the heart of the matter.

“You’re not him, Terry.”

I got up and took my place beside him. We watched JFK sniffing around the yard, lumbering across the grass, chasing moths. I said nothing because I had nothing to say.

“I’m sorry I put the call through, son.”

“You were only doing what you had to do.”

“I should’ve let you stay out west on your ranch.”

“It wasn’t my ranch. And it’s all right. I never should’ve left. The last five years were a waste, Dad. I’m sorry I went. I’m sorry I left the family. I never should have gone. It was a mistake to run.”

“Because of Kimmy.”

“Because of everyone.”

He put an arm around me and ruffled my white patch. It was a caricature of what your average American father might do to his son, but I appreciated the effort he was making. I only wished I could make more of one myself.

He whistled and opened the screen door. JFK galloped out of the brush and up the porch stairs, made sure he licked at my hand as he passed, and then rushed into the house.