Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

“Listen, Walk. What you think you know, or might know, about what happened over the years. Whatever I was, I’m not now.”

“How come you didn’t let me visit, after your mother?”

Vincent kept his eyes on the scene, like he hadn’t heard. “He wrote me, Hal. Every year. On Sissy’s birthday.”

“You shouldn’t—”

“Sometimes it was short, to remind me, like I needed it. Other times he went on for ten pages. It wasn’t all anger, some was on change, what I could do, how I could let others live their lives and not pull them down.”

Walk got it then, it was not self-preservation of any kind, the way he’d reasoned it.

“If you can’t right a wrong, if you can’t ever do that …”

Together they watched a trawler, The Sun Drift , Walk knew it, blue paint and rust, curved lines of steel and wire. It moved silent from where they were, no waves just the carve of its hull.

“Some things just are, right. There’s a reason, always, but talk won’t change any of it.”

There was much Walk wanted to ask about the last thirty years of his friend’s life, but the scars on Vincent’s wrists told him it might well be worse than he could ever have imagined.

They walked back toward town in silence, Vincent keeping to the side streets, head down, always. “Star,” he said. “She saw a lot of guys then?”

Walk shrugged, and, for a moment, thought he had heard the slightest note of jealousy in Vincent’s voice.

He watched his friend walk away, back toward Sunset, to patch up the old, empty house.

After lunch Walk made the drive to Vancour Hill Hospital.

He rode the elevator to the fourth floor, took his place in the waiting room and read a glossy, pages of stark homes as minimalist as their keepers, reflected light all sanitary stucco. He kept his head low, though the other person was a young woman as determined as him, there in betraying body, mind displaced.

His name called, he moved fast, no outward sign, no matter the aches and pains, only a few hours earlier he could barely stand.

“The pills aren’t working,” he said, as he sat. The office was uniform, the only personal touch a framed photo that faced away. The doctor was Kendrick.

“Your hand again?” Kendrick said.

“Everything. A half hour to get up each day.”

“But you haven’t slowed down, in other ways? Walking? Smiling?”

He smiled despite himself. She returned it.

“Just the hands, the arms. Stiffness. Nothing more, I know it’ll come.”

“And you haven’t told anyone. Still?”

“They chalk me as a boozehound.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“My line of work, it’s a good fit, right?”

“You know you’ll have to tell someone.”

“And then what? I won’t sit behind a desk.”

“You could try something else.”

“I tell you, you ever see me wasting my days on some fishing boat, you just come down and shoot me. Being a policeman is … I like my place. I like my life. I want to keep both.”

Kendrick smiled a sad smile. “Anything else?”

He stared out, the window more than a view then, a way to leave himself while he detailed what needed saying. A little trouble pissing, a little trouble shitting. And more than a little trouble sleeping. Kendrick said it was normal, made suggestions, lose a little weight, diet, therapy, changing dose, Levodopa. Nothing he did not know. He was not someone that walked blindly into medicating. He spent his free time in the library, reading up, six stages, Braak’s Hypothesis, even back to James Parkinson.

“Fuck,” he said, then raised a hand. “I’m sorry for cursing. I don’t do that.”

“Fuck,” Kendrick agreed.

“I can’t lose my job. I just can’t. The people need me.” He wondered if that were true. “It’s only the right side,” he lied.

“There’s a group.”

He made to stand.

“Please,” she said, and he took the pamphlet.

* * *

Duchess sat on the sand. She hugged her knees as she watched Robin, ankle deep and hunting shells. He had a collection, mostly fragments, his pockets fit to burst.

Off left was a group of kids from her school, the girls in bathing suits and the boys tossing a ball. The noise floated on, right through her. She had that ability, to feel totally alone on a beach full of people, in a class full of kids. She got that from her mother, but she fought it with everything she had. Robin needed stability, not a pissy teenage sister who bitched her way through her shitty life.

“Another,” Robin called.

She stood and walked over, the water cold for a moment, lines of rugged coast stretched far in either direction. She fixed Robin’s sun hat and felt his forearms, warm, they could not afford lotion. “Don’t burn.”

“I know.”

She helped him search, fished a perfect sand dollar from the clearest of water and watched him smile.

Robin saw Ricky Tallow and ran at him, the two greeting each other with hugs that made her smile.

“Hi, Duchess.” Leah Tallow. She was plain, the kind of even features that Duchess sometimes wished her own mother had. Just a mom, not a singer in a bar with her ass and tits out, not the kind of woman men stared at when they walked along the beach.

“We have to go soon.” Robin’s face fell but he didn’t say anything.

“We can run him back if you want to get on. Where is it you live?”

“Ivy Ranch Road.” Ricky’s father, head of grey hair long before he should’ve, the kind of bags beneath his eyes that seemed to get heavier every time Duchess saw the man.

Leah shot her husband a look.

He looked away, emptied out a bag full of beach toys and Robin eyed them, keeping his mouth straight. He wouldn’t ask her, she hated that, loved him for it but still hated that.

She weighed it a while. “You sure?”

“Of course. Ricky’s brother is joining us later. He can show the boys how to toss a ball.”

Robin looked up at Duchess, wide eyes.

“We’ll drop him back before dinner.”

Duchess took Robin aside, knelt in the sand and cupped his face tight. “You know to be good.”

“Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder, where Ricky was beginning to dig out a channel. “Yes, I’ll be good. I swear.”

“Don’t leave them, don’t run off, be polite. Don’t say nothing about Mom.”

Robin nodded, his most serious face, and then she kissed his head, waved to Leah Tallow and crossed the hot sand to grab her bicycle.

She was sweating by the time she reached Sunset Road, got off and pushed the last fifty. Outside the King house she stopped.

On the porch Vincent sanded, his back bent as sweat dripped from his chin. She watched a while. He had muscles, low and tight on his arms, not the bulging kind she saw on the beach. She crossed the street and stood at the end of his driveway.

“You want to help?” Vincent had stopped, sitting now, a block and sandpaper in hand, he offered out another.

“Why the fuck would I want to do that?”

He went back to work. She propped her bike against the fence and moved nearer.

“You want a drink or something?”

“You’re a stranger.”

She noticed he had a tattoo that showed when he stretched, peeking from beneath the arm of his T-shirt. He worked on for another ten minutes.

She moved nearer still.

He stopped, sat again. “That man … the other night, you know him?”

“He looks at me like he knows me.”

“Does he stop by often?”

“More and more lately.” She wiped sweat from her head with the back of her arm.

“You want me to tell Walk?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“You got anyone else you can call?”

“I’m an outlaw, it says so in the records.”