T. Parker: Storm Runners

Mike opened his hand and Stromsoe wondered what he meant by it. It’s over? I have nothing? You mean nothing to me?

The eyes stared at him with the same broad mysteries. Stromsoe saw nothing cruel or furious in them, nothing illuminated or forgiving — just the partial understanding that is all a man can have.

“This isn’t how I pictured it, Matt.”

“Me neither.”

Mike stared straight ahead and said nothing for a moment, as if listening to the speed of his own breathing.

He blinked. “We did our best with what we were given.”

“We were given everything, Mike. This is what’s left of it.”

“I never once felt like I had enough. Never.”

The breeze stirred Mike’s hair and something in his throat rattled and caught.

“It doesn’t hurt, Matt.”

“Good.”

“Come closer. I can’t hear you. All I hear is wind.”

Stromsoe moved closer.

With a groan Mike freed his hidden fist and swung but Stromsoe caught the wrist and slowly turned it back on itself until the switchblade slipped from Mike’s hand.

“Your luck will run out,” hissed Tavarez. “And the luck of your pale race and your soulless country. And the devil will then fuck you to death one at a time then all at once.”

“Yes. He’s practicing on you right now.”

“You still believe in the God who ignores you?”

“I believe, yes.”

“My faith isn’t strong like it used to be.”

“Faith doesn’t make God.”

“Or hell.”

“That either,” said Stromsoe.

Mike tried to slow his breathing but this made his throat stutter like a truck on a washboard road. He gagged and swallowed loudly. “Tell my children I loved them. Tell my wife I’m waiting in hell for her.”

“I’ll tell the children. But you’ll have to pass along your own curses, Mike. You always find a way.”

“You were never as smart as me,” said Mike.

“Never. But I’ll be here an hour from now and you won’t.”

“That’s an arguable privilege.”

“It’s not arguable to me at all.”

Mike took a series of very shallow breaths, then coughed weakly. His voice was a whisper. “We did have everything, didn’t we?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t have a single regret.”

“I’ve got a million,” said Stromsoe.

“Except that I didn’t shoot you first.”

Mike managed to lift his head off the ground. His eyes searched for the pistol but his head lowered back down to the leaves. Then his fists slowly opened and the light left his eyes.

Stromsoe sat for a long while. He could smell the blood and the rich earth. It was cool in the orchard with the sun streaking the leaves. A painted lady landed on the toe of Mike’s right boot, fanned its wings in a spot of sun.

Stromsoe remembered the time Mike had helped him run down the kids who threw the rocks at the marching band, and how surprised he’d been at Mike’s ferocity as well as his own. He thought again of the abandon, when every nerve and muscle was needed for that good fight, when he was stronger and faster than he would ever be. What a pure thing, what a rarity as the years had gone by — a moment to be right, and to have a friend there with you.

He looked down at the body and thought of the many people who had died so that he could sit here in this dappled garden. Long ago, standing in the burnished afternoon light of a Southern California cemetery with his father and mother, Stromsoe had understood with a child’s simple wonder that some lives end so that others may continue. Later he came to understand that a man’s life can be made rich through love as by Hallie and Billy and Frankie, or cursed through hatred as with Tavarez, but it was all their lives that coursed through him now as he reached out and closed Mike’s eyes forever.

Fallbrook got record rains that season. The total rain recorded in our area was 34.89 inches, a place that usually gets 12 inches. My rain gauge stands just a few miles from where Charles Hatfield once had his secret laboratory.