Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

When she saw the cop cars her first instinct was to turn. An hour earlier, when she’d picked up her bicycle and wheeled it down the side of the house she’d made a stop outside Brandon Rock’s place. She’d found a stone, sharp enough, walked up his driveway, lifted the cover from the Mustang and dragged it down the door and fender, so hard and deep she could see the silver beneath. He hit her mother. Fuck him.

But this was too many cars, too much noise, more than Walk and that look he gave her.

She dropped her bike, dropped her bag, kicked out at a cop when he tried to move in front of her. He backed off, she knew that wasn’t normal.

She ran at the house, ducked the tape and another cop, cursed at all of them. All the bad words she knew.

She found her brother and calmed, with Walk looking on, his mouth set straight but his eyes giving everything, all of it. They wouldn’t let her in the living room, no matter the way she flailed her arms at Walk, the way she caught him by the eye, the words she used, the feral way her brother cried.

Walk half-carried her out into the yard, where the people could not see her. He set her down in the dirt and she called him a motherfucker and beside them Robin sobbed like tomorrow would no longer happen.

Strangers all over, men in uniform, men in suits.

When they thought she’d calmed she broke and ran and ducked them. She was fast enough to make it through. At the door and inside, through a home reduced to a single scene.

She saw her.

Her mother.

She did not fight when the arm closed around her, no longer kicked out and cursed, just let Walk carry her like the child she was.

“You and Robin can stay with me tonight.”

To Walk’s cruiser, Robin holding her hand tight. Neighbors stared on, a TV camera lit them up, Duchess did not have the strength to glare. She saw Milton at his window, met his eye before he turned and moved back into the shadow.

She’d picked up the bag from the yard, inside she saw the cakes, the doll and the candles.

They sat there a long time, till the hours lay so heavy on Robin he fell into a troubled sleep beside her, moaning out and calling as she stroked his hair.

Walk drove slow out of their street, Duchess watching the bright light that was her home, the dimming scene that was her life.

Part Two

Big Sky

11

WALK DROVE WITH AN ARM in the sun as endless plains rose and fell from prairie to steppe and grasslands beyond. East was the river that slithered four states before emptying into the Pacific.

He left the radio off. Miles of nothing but the call of crickets and the occasional pass of beaten trucks with bare-chested drivers. Some dipped their heads, others looked right ahead like they had plenty to hide. Walk kept his speed low, he had not slept in a long time. They’d spent a night in a motel, their rooms joined by a door Walk left cracked all night. He’d offered to fly with them but the boy was afraid. Walk was glad, he’d never liked flying.

They sat in the back, each staring out, watching the land like it was something all foreign. Robin had not told anything of that night, not to Walk or his sister, or the special cops that came down. Armed with compassion, they’d settled him into a room of pastel colors and murals and animals with smiling faces. They gave him pens and paper, talked around him with looks of finality, like he was fragile pieces so far from one whole. His sister watched on, unimpressed, arms folded, nose wrinkled like she didn’t much care for the bullshit they were peddling.

“You alright back there?”

He got nothing.

They passed towns, water towers, rusting scaffold. For fifty miles the railroad accompanied, brown weed grown over burned slats like the last train had left the station a lifetime before.

He slowed by a Methodist chapel, white boards and lightest green slate, the steeple an arrow that pointed to more.

“You hungry?” He knew they would not answer. It was a long trip, a thousand miles. The scorched stretch of Nevada, Route 80 without end, the dirt as dry as the air. It took an age for the world to change, orange to green, Idaho upon them, Yellowstone and Wyoming just beyond. Duchess took an interest for a while.

At the Twin River Mills they stopped at a diner.

In a torn booth Walk ordered hamburgers and milkshakes and they watched a gas station across the way. A young family, U-Haul, moving between shells, the little girl a sticky mess of chocolate and her mother fussing after her with a wet-wipe and a smile.

Robin stopped eating and watched. Walk placed a hand on his shoulder and the boy stared back down into his shake.

“It’ll be alright.”

“How’d you figure that?” Duchess fired back, quick like she’d been expecting something.

“I remember your grandfather, when I was small. He’s a good man. I heard he’s in a hundred acres, maybe you’ll like it. Clear air and all that.” He didn’t know what he was saying, just that he wished he could stop. “Fertile soil.” He’d worsened it.

Duchess rolled her eyes.

“You talked to Vincent King?” She did not look up.

Walk dabbed his lips with a napkin. “I’m … I’ll assist the state police.”

They’d bumped Walk from the case the morning after, left him to arrange the safeguarding of the scene till they were done. Two days, tech vans and busy people, Walk liaised with locals, closed half the road. They moved on to the King house. Again, Walk was left to safeguard. They deemed him too small town, Cape Haven PD too small to cope. He had not argued.

“They’ll put him to death.”

Robin looked over at his sister, his eyes tired but intense, the last flares of a dying fire.

“Duchess—”

“It’s what they’ll do. A man like that, there’s no coming back. Shooting a woman, unarmed. You believe in an eye for eye, Walk?”

“I don’t know.”

Duchess fished a fry in her ketchup and shook her head like she was disappointed in him. She spoke of Vincent often, the man that shot her mother dead and left her brother hiding in the closet.

“Eat your burger,” Duchess said to Robin, and he ate. “And the green.”

“But—”

She stared.

He picked up a piece of lettuce and nibbled the corner.

Another hour and Walk saw the sign for Dearman. Razor wire ran a quarter mile, keeping people in and out of fractious lives. A guard in a tower, eyes beneath a wide-brim hat and one hand on a rifle. In the mirror Walk was tailed by dust, like he’d stirred the calm.

Robin slept in his seat, face tight like his dreams were keeping pace with his days.

“That’s a prison,” Duchess said.

“It is.”

“Like the kind they got Vincent King in.”

“Yes.”

“Will he get beaten in there?”

“Prison’s not nice.”

“Maybe he’ll get all raped.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that.”

“Fuck off, Walk.”

He more than understood the hate, but he worried what it would do to her, those cinders, the lightest breeze and they’d flare.

“I hope he gets beaten so bad. I see it, you know, when I’m lying down at night. I see his face. I hope he gets beaten till there’s nothing left.”

He pushed back in his seat, aching bones, tremoring hands. That morning he’d lain so helpless he worried it wouldn’t pass, that the girl would have to fetch help. He thought back to the start, a pain in his shoulder, just a pain in his shoulder.

“I worry I won’t remember Cape Haven.” She spoke to the views they passed.

“I can write you. I can send photos.”

“It’s not home now. Where we’re going, that’s not home either. He took it all.”

“It’ll be …” He stopped himself, the words catching.