Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

She wants to believe something else must have happened.

And she would, but for this. She’s been worried about her son since last year when she saw what he did to that bird. It was a small bird, a sparrow maybe. It flew into one of the windows, but didn’t die. She heard it hit the glass and walked over to see what had happened. Sandy was hunched over it in the dirt, poking it with a stick, watching it twitch and writhe and flap its broken wing in its attempt to escape. He poked at it and refused to let it get away. His eyes were distant. There was a small smile on his lips. She didn’t say anything. She told herself he was a boy being a boy, a boy discovering what death was. But it bothered her.

Now that her husband is dead it bothers her more.

But she doesn’t want to believe her beautiful boy is a monster. She knows he killed his stepfather, that’s indisputable, but that doesn’t make him a monster. It doesn’t make him anything but a boy who reached his limit.

She should have seen it. She did see it.

But she’s seen too that there’s sweetness in him. Can monsters have sweetness in them as well as evil? Can they wrap their arms around their mothers’ necks and say I love you for no reason at all? Can they make their mothers breakfast in bed simply because they want to be nice?

She doesn’t know.

Whatever happened out on that country road, two men are dead and her son’s gone missing.

She steps from her car, walks to her front door, and pushes her way into the living room. It feels dark and lonesome. She wishes she could talk to Carl. He understands the overwhelming sense of loss you sometimes feel when you walk into an empty room. She wants to call him and talk to him, but she won’t do that, she refuses to do that, refuses to be mistress to a man married to his addiction. She’s done it before and won’t do it again.

She walks to her new couch and sits down. She stares at the wall and wishes she could go out and look for Sandy, but she’d have no idea where to begin. He could be anywhere — anywhere but here. He’s not in the kitchen where he took his first steps, or in the bedroom where he spent so many hours sprawled across his bed reading comic books, or at the dining table where he sometimes did math homework, or out back where he often played alone.

Maybe he’ll come back to her.

If he did, would she turn him over to the police? Knowing what he is, would she do that? She doesn’t think she would; she doesn’t think she could.

Someone knocks on the front door.

Her first thought, of course, is that it’s Sandy. She hopes it is. She hopes it isn’t.

She gets to her feet.

3

Carl stands waiting at the door. He watched her walk inside, so he knows she’s on the other side of it. She was gone when he first arrived, but turned her car into the driveway only four cigarettes later.

She pulls open the door with a somehow hopeful expression on her face — her eyes wide and expectant, her mouth on the verge of a smile. He removes the fedora from his head and says her name. The hope drops from her face.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Hoping to talk to you a minute.’

‘I meant what I said. We’re done.’

‘I can stop.’

‘Then stop.’

‘You don’t understand. I just need to-’

‘I can’t deal with this right now. I can’t deal with you .’

‘But if you just let me-’

‘My son is gone and I don’t know where he is. I’m scared and I’m alone and I can’t deal with your bullshit right now.’

‘Your son is gone? What happened?’

She looks at him for a long time, seems as though she may soften, then shakes her head.

‘No.’

She closes the door in his face.

4

Candice watches through the peephole as Carl turns and walks away, head hanging down, shoulders slumped. He drags his feet. Then he’s gone, and she’s glad that he is. She can’t deal with her own troubles and his as well. She simply can’t.

But as well as being glad she’s sorry.

5

Carl sits behind the wheel of his car, which is parked across the street from his house. He has the window rolled down and a breeze blows against his face. Since he began using he has experienced fewer and fewer moments during which he feels neither wasted nor sick, but he’s experiencing one of those moments now. He feels almost like the man he was before Naomi died. It makes him feel strong. It makes him feel he doesn’t need the junk. He should stop taking it. Friedman was right. Candice was right. He should stop taking it, and he can. He knows he can.

He should also tell his wife goodbye. If he told his wife goodbye his continuing to live without her wouldn’t feel like a betrayal. He should tell her I loved you more than I ever loved anything or anyone and I don’t know how to live without you in my life, and I’m afraid of sitting at our dinner table and looking across it to an empty chair, but you’re gone and I have to say goodbye. I have to say goodbye because even though I’m afraid of facing my life without you I’m more afraid that you will haunt me forever. So let me go, let me go, let me go.

He pushes out of the car and walks across the street and stands on the sidewalk in front of his house and looks at it. His haunted house. The most terrible thing about it is that the ghost within it is kind.

Don’t soothe me while I say goodbye. It only makes it harder. Don’t tell me it’s okay when it isn’t okay and can’t be.

He walks up the path to the front door, his front door, over whose threshold he carried Naomi on the day they moved in. They’d been married two years already, but this was their first home, their only home. Before they bought it they lived in a furnished apartment on De Longpre. He looks at the brass handle. He looks at the keyhole. They had no furniture their first two days, so they made love on the floor and slept in sleeping bags. Then Sears amp; Roebuck delivered their furniture, and they slept together in bed, the same bed which even now sits inside holding Naomi’s scent within its fabric.

He closes his eyes.

Go in and tell her goodbye. It’s what you have to do, so do it.

I will. Right now. I’m going to reach forward right now and unlock the door, then I’ll push into the living room and-

He turns away from the door and walks back to his car.

1

Leland Jones stumbles from the bar, the evening air cool and crisp. He was in darkness, inhaling stale air for hours, so stepping outside feels a bit like stepping from a dream with the dream still clinging to him. As a boy he felt this way when he left a movie theater following a double feature. He’d been so caught up in the film experience that it still seemed more real than reality, even as he walked through reality. The films were more vibrant and alive than the small Texas town he lived in.

But now he’s caught in a different kind of dream.

When he first arrived at the bar he simply sat hunched over his beer, drinking slowly, thinking the situation through and wondering what he might do about it. But the more he drank the angrier he got. He began telling the bar-keep what was on his mind.

The district attorney is a miserable son of a bitch, ruined my life. Thinks he can just kick me like a bad dog and he won’t get bit. He’s got a surprise coming. Leland Jones has teeth. I’m gonna make that no-good son of a bitch pay for what he done to me. He ruined my life and I’m gonna make him pay for it. You see if I don’t.

He feels disoriented and unsteady. And he feels angry.

He squints at the darkening sky. Night is coming. The moon visible as well as the egg-yolk sun, which is spilling across the horizon. Thin haloed clouds scud by overhead. The brighter stars have begun revealing themselves, making the sky look like a nonsensical connect-the-dots picture.