Chris Whitaker: We Begin at the End

“Is he asleep?”

She nodded once.

“I went to check on your mother, she’ll be alright.”

She nodded again.

“You can go and grab something, a soda, there’s a machine next to—”

“I know.”

A look back into the room saw her brother sleeping soundly, he would not move until she stirred him.

Walk held out a dollar bill, she took it reluctantly.

She walked the corridors, bought the soda and didn’t drink it, she would keep it for Robin when he woke. She saw into cubicles, sounds of birth and tears and life. She saw shells of people, so empty she knew they would not recover. Cops led bad men with tattooed arms and bloodied faces. She smelled the drunks, the bleach, the vomit and shit.

She passed a nurse, a smile because most of them had seen her before, just one of those kids, dealt a losing hand.

When she returned she found Walk had set two chairs by the door. She checked on her brother then sat.

Walk offered her gum and she shook her head.

She could tell that he wanted to talk, to bullshit about change, a slick on the long road, how it would all be different.

“You didn’t call.”

He watched her.

“Social. You didn’t call.”

“I should.” He said it sad, like he was letting down her or the badge, she did not know which.

“But you won’t.”

“I won’t.”

He had a stomach that strained his tan shirt. The chubby, reddened cheeks of a boy whose indulgent parents never told him “no.” And a face so open she could not imagine he carried a single secret. Star said he was all good, like that was a thing.

“You should get some sleep.”

They sat like that till stars leaned to first light, the moon forgot its place and held like a smear on new day, a reminder of what had gone. Opposite was a window. Duchess stood at the glass and pressed her head to the trees and the falling wild. Birdsong. A long way and she saw water, specks that were trawlers crawling the waves.

Walk cleared his throat. “Your mother … was there a man—”

“There’s always a man. Whenever anything fucked up happens in the world, there’s always a man.”

“Darke?”

She held straight.

“You can’t tell me?” he asked.

“I’m an outlaw.”

“Right.”

She wore a bow in her hair and fussed with it often. She was too thin, too pale, too beautiful like her mother.

“There’s a baby just been born down there.” Walk changed it up.

“What did they call it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fifty bucks says it’s not Duchess.”

He laughed gently. “Exotic by rarity. You know you were going to be Emily.”

“Sore must be the storm.”

“Right.”

“She still reads that one to Robin.” Duchess sat, crossed her leg, rubbed the muscle, her sneaker loose and worn. “Is this my storm, Walk?”

He sipped coffee, like he was searching for an answer to an impossible question. “I like Duchess.”

“You try it a while. If I was a boy I might’ve been Sue.” She lay her head back and watched the strips blink. “She wants to die.”

“She doesn’t. You mustn’t think that.”

“I can’t decide if suicide is the most selfish or selfless act.”

At six a nurse led her.

Star lay, a shadow of a person, even less of a mother.

“The Duchess of Cape Haven.” Star, her smile there but weak. “It’s alright.”

Duchess watched her, then Star cried and Duchess crossed the room, pressed her cheek to her mother’s chest and wondered how her heart still beat.

Together they lay in amid the dawn, a fresh day but no light of promise because Duchess knew promise was a falsity.

“I love you. I’m sorry.”

There was much Duchess could say, but for the moment she could find nothing more than, “I love you. I know.”

2

AT THE CREST OF THE hill the land fell away.

Sun climbed cerulean sky as Duchess, riding in the back with her brother beside, took his small hand in hers.

Walk eased the cruiser down their street and pulled up out front of the old house, then followed them in. He tried to fix breakfast but found the cupboards so bare he left them and ran to Rosie’s Diner, then returned with pancakes and smiled as Robin ate three.

After she’d washed Robin’s face and laid out his clothes, Duchess went out front and found Walk sitting on the step. She watched the Cape begin its modest wake, the mailman passed, Brandon Rock from the house beside came out and hosed down his lawn. That they did not give a second look to the cruiser parked outside the Radley home made Duchess sad and glad.

“Can I give you a ride in?”

“No.” She settled beside him and tied her lace.

“I can collect your mom.”

“She said she’d call Darke.”

Duchess did not know the true nature of her mother’s friendship with Chief Walker, though she guessed he wanted to fuck her, like the other men in town.

She looked out at their tired yard. The last summer she’d set about planting with her mother. Robin had bought a small watering can and softened the dirt, his cheeks colored as he made trip after trip. Blue-eyes, Indian mallow and mountain lilac.

They died of neglect.

“Did she say what it was?” Walk said it gently. “Last night, you know why?”

It was the kind of cruel question she was not used to from him, because, mostly, there wasn’t any kind of reason. But this time she knew why he asked, she knew about Vincent King, about her aunt Sissy who was buried in the cemetery by the edge of the bluff. Everyone knew her grave, behind the sun-bleached picket, with the babies that hadn’t made it, the children cut down by the same God their parents prayed to.

“She didn’t say nothing.”

Behind they heard Robin. Duchess stood and fixed his hair, wiped toothpaste from his cheek with her spit and then checked his schoolbag, that he had his reading book and journal, his water bottle.

She slid the straps over his shoulders and he smiled and she smiled back.

They stood side by side and watched the cruiser pare the long street, and then Duchess slipped an arm around her brother and they began to walk.

The neighbor cut the hose and walked over to the edge of his yard, slight limp he tried hard to correct. Brandon Rock. Broad, tan. A stud in one ear, feathered hair, silk robe. Sometimes he benched with the garage door up and metal blaring out.

“Your mother again? Someone should call social services.” Voice like his nose had been broken but never fixed. He carried a dumbbell in one hand and curled it now and then. His right arm noticeably bigger than the left.

Duchess turned to him.

Breeze blew. His robe parted.

She wrinkled her nose. “Flashing a kid. I should call the cops.”

Brandon stared as Robin led her away.

“Did you see Walk’s hands shaking?’ Robin said.

“Always worse in the morning.”

“Why?”

She shrugged but knew. Walk and her mother, their shared troubles and the way they dealt with them.

“Did Mom say anything, last night, when I was in my room?” She’d been doing her homework, her project on her family tree, when Robin hammered at the door and said Mom was sick again.

“She had her photos out. The old ones, with Sissy and Grandpa.” Robin had taken to the idea of having a grandpa the first time he’d seen the tall man in their mother’s photographs. That he’d never met him, that Star said next to nothing about him, did not seem to matter. Robin needed people, the cushion of barren names that would keep him from feeling so vulnerable. He longed for cousins and uncles and Sunday football and barbeque, like the other kids in his class.

“Do you know about Vincent King?”