Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

“You still know all the shortcuts,” Walk said.

“Star showed me that one.”

Twenty minutes and they were by the old wishing tree, stars over the ocean, the tower at Little Brook like an abandoned lighthouse.

“I can’t believe it’s still here. You remember we used to make out under this tree.”

He laughed. “I remember everything.”

“You never could unhook my bra.”

“One time I did.”

“No. I unhooked it before, let you have your moment.”

She sat down, then reached up and pulled him down beside her. Together they leaned back against the wide oak and looked up at the stars.

“I never said I was sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“Leaving you.”

“It was a long time ago. We were kids.”

“We weren’t, Walk. Not according to the judge. Do you think about it?”

“What?”

“Me. Pregnant. A baby.”

“Every day.”

“He didn’t get over it, my father. He wasn’t all bad. It’s just … he thought he was doing right by me.”

“And wrong by God.”

She said nothing for a while. The lights of a boat drifted, moving with the tide.

“You didn’t marry,” she said.

“Of course not.”

She laughed gently. “We were fifteen.”

“But I knew it.”

“That’s what I loved about you. That pure belief, in good and bad and love. You never said anything, about my father, about what he did. You never told anyone. Even though I left you behind, and Star went to another school and it was just you, and this thing. This giant fucking sickening thing that Vincent did.”

Walk swallowed. “I just wanted you all to be happy.”

That laugh again, nothing about it was pitying.

“I did see you,” he said. “Maybe a year after. At the mall in Clearwater Cove. I was with my mother, and you were standing in line outside the movie theater.”

She was quiet before it came to her. “David Rowen. Just a boy. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, I know that. I didn’t mean because of that. I just, you looked happy, Martha. And I thought about that boy, and he didn’t know, right. He didn’t know what we all went through, and I thought that must’ve been alright. You could just … it wasn’t there between you. You didn’t have to share that thing. You could just … be.”

She cried.

He held her hand.

26

AS WINTER ARRIVED RADLEY LAND froze and the sky whitened with light snows.

Robin lay flat on his back and watched it so long Duchess had to drag him in when his fingers turned white. The field work eased but the animals still needed tending. The gray and the black wore coats as they grazed. Duchess began to take the gray out each morning alone, saddling her at first light and following tracks she began to learn well. She took enjoyment from the Montana quiet, so thick it was as if God had laid down a blanket over the woodland and smothered all but the loudest chickadees.

They watched out for Darke, Hal sitting till late each night, a deerstalker and blanket and the shotgun by his feet. Some nights Duchess woke and went to the window, saw him down there then promptly fell back into deep sleep. Other nights she went down and he fixed cocoa. They would sit, mostly in silence, but sometimes she allowed him to tell her stories of Billy Blue, so dazzling and detailed she wondered if the old man made them up himself. One night she fell asleep on his shoulder, then woke in her bed, the cover pulled up tight.

She spent weekends with Thomas Noble and Robin, tramping white woods, giving them a head start then tracking their boot prints. The cold was crisp and fresh and brought clarity to her wandering mind. She thought less about Cape Haven and its unchanging seasons, and more about Montana and, occasionally, the future. She chose memories of her mother with great care, seeking only the diamonds amongst a mountain of coal.

Her grades improved, she sat at the back and got on with her schoolwork, drafting Indians and settlers and making them live through her writing. She sent Walk a photo of Radley land, taken from the window in her bedroom the day they woke to thick snow. She went with Hal into town each Saturday morning, they did the grocery shopping then headed to Cherry’s to drink cocoa and eat donuts. Most days Dolly was there and they sat and talked with her. Bill’s health had worsened and beneath Dolly’s faultless face Duchess saw cracks beginning to snake in a show of prescient mourning that left her fretful after.

They drove up to Hamby Lake, the water so deep it might’ve been an ocean. Hal rented a boat, cutting crystal water as they drifted and fished, the sun stealing the cold away for an afternoon as close to perfect as Duchess could allow herself to imagine. Robin pulled out a decent rainbow trout, then cried till Hal threw it back.

Thomas Noble spoke of the winter dance often. Some days she merely told him to fuck off, others she accused him of plotting to spike the punch then do wicked things once she had passed out cold. She called him a sexual predator and he scratched his head and pushed his frames up his nose.

The first day of December he brought her a bunch of bluebells he’d been saving. Long dead, a sorry sight but the sentiment was there. He biked the four miles through icy roads and up their carpeted driveway. By the time he arrived mild frostbite had set in and he was seeing stars. Hal sat him in front of the fire till he thawed.

“I won’t dance with you,” she said as they watched the flames. “I won’t kiss you or hug you. I won’t hold your good hand. I won’t dress pretty and I may not even speak to you for most of the night.”

“Okay,” he said, a slight chatter in his teeth.

From the doorway she saw Hal and Robin smiling and she flipped them off.

The next Sunday, after church, Hal drove them to the strip mall in Briarstown. Ten stores in a neat row, from Subway to Cash Advance. She found women’s clothing in a place called Cally’s. She rifled through rails of polyester, held a sequined gown to the light and saw it bald in at least five places. “It’s like being in Paris.”

Hal pointed to a yellow dress and she asked him what the fuck he knew about fashion. She pointed to his boots and faded jeans, his plaid shirt and wide hat and declared him a scarecrow.

They circled the store three times. Robin brought over gaudy finds, beaming as he held them against her then running off when she asked him if he wanted his sister to dress like an eighties streetwalker.

Cally herself came out, read the mood and retreated to the counter. She wore a beehive and platforms and hid twenty surplus pounds beneath a wide belt. Hal smiled at her and she returned a smile in sympathy.

Duchess found it at the back, stopped still and stared. Then, slowly, she reached out and picked it up. She placed the hat on her head and felt her stomach flip, her mind on Billy Blue, her blood. Her place.

It was a thing of beauty, leather studs, brim just right, the kind of hat an outlaw would kill for.

Hal appeared behind. “Suits you.”

She took it off and checked the tag. “Jesus.”

“Stetson,” Hal said, like that explained the eye-watering price.

She would not ask for it. It was too fancy, but still, she glanced back longingly as she walked back to the dresses.

“It’ll have to be this piece of shit then.” She snatched the yellow dress from the rail.

Hal made to speak, to tell her that was the very dress he’d picked out near an hour ago. She glared and he thought better of it.

* * *

Cuddy set up the meet. A burger joint just south of Bitterwater, Bill’s, all fading red paint and air of going out of business, handwritten signs told of three-dollar specials. It was empty, Walk rolled down the window as he headed to the drive-thru.