Michael Koryta - The Prophet

“Adam, you didn’t need to—,” Kent began, but his brother cut him off.

“Don’t worry, no money spent. I’m going cheap on them today.” He looked up at the kids and winked, and Lisa’s smile was genuine. She’d always liked him. She didn’t remember the day in the driveway. “Just some old stuff.”

He reached into the bag, removed a weathered football, and extended it to Andrew.

“Come on, big guy. Let’s see your grip.”

Andrew beelined over. Adam was holding the ball easily in one of his massive hands, and Andrew had to cradle it in both arms.

“Your father,” Adam said, “set a school record for touchdown passes with that ball. Hit a kid named Leo Fitzgerald on the slant, a fifteen-yard pass. Put it right in his hands, soft as I just gave it to you.”

Kent was astounded that he remembered the play, let alone that he’d kept the ball. Kent remembered the pass, remembered the record—Lorell McCoy had broken it in week five of this season—but he’d never seen the ball, had no idea that Adam had claimed it.

“Say thank you,” he told Andrew.

Andrew thanked his uncle, dropped onto his butt on the floor, and began to study the football. Adam returned to his shopping bag, and this time he used both hands.

“Lisa, this is for you. Your aunt made it a long time ago. I’m sure she’d like you to have it.”

It was one of Marie’s stained-glass pieces. Fall leaves in brilliant reds and oranges, tumbling down from the wiry black outline of a tree. Kent watched his brother hand it to his daughter and he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, not even Beth’s.

“It’s so pretty,” Lisa said. Almost whispered. “She made this?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “She was pretty good, right?”

Lisa nodded. For a moment they were frozen there together, each of them with their hands on the stained glass, and then Adam released it and rose from the floor.

“Dinner smells good,” he said. “What is that, spaghetti?”

“Lasagna,” Beth said.

“Ah, good stuff. I wanted to contribute something…” He’d removed a bottle of red wine from the bag, and now he looked down at it and gave an awkward smile. “Um… you guys don’t drink, though, do you? I’m sorry.”

“I’d love a glass of wine,” Beth said. Kent didn’t recall her having any alcohol in years, not since the kids were born, and not often before that. She met his surprised stare and smiled. “I think it sounds great.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, Adam. Let’s eat, gang. I’m hungry.”

He asked Beth to say grace before dinner. He wasn’t sure why, because he was always the one who said grace. She took the request in stride and offered a prayer and Adam sat with a bowed head and said a soft amen when she concluded with a request that Rachel Bond’s family be granted peace.

It was a good meal. The kids, shy at first, grew more vocal as things went on. Adam joked with them easily. Beth and Kent each drank a small glass of wine. Then Beth took the kids upstairs to get ready for bed, and Adam began to load the dishes into the dishwasher.

“She’s a great cook. Going to be harder for me to stay up tonight, after a meal like that.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t done it before,” Kent said. “I hate that it took circumstances like this to get us here, but sometimes you can get to a really good place out of…”

His voice trailed off because Adam had looked up with a hard stare. The gaze softened a touch, and Adam returned to the dishes and said, “Sometimes, yeah. I guess that’s the truth.”

Silence followed, and Kent tried to break it by saying, “I’m going to watch some video on Saint Anthony’s. You want to have a look with me?”

“Know what Saint Anthony represents?” Adam said, head still down.

Kent was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t. It felt like the sort of thing he should know, but he was a Protestant, not a Catholic, and the notion of saints was a foreign thing.

“I don’t.”

“Patron saint of lost things,” Adam said, closing the dishwasher and turning to face Kent.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Adam nodded, drying his hands on a towel. “I gave him a few tries once.”

Kent didn’t know what to say to that.

“I was going to watch film,” he began again. “You might see some things there that I—”

“Watching film is your job,” Adam said. “Watching the street is mine.”

They went into the living room then, and Beth came down to join them. Adam thanked her again for the meal while he stood and surveyed the darkness beyond. He said, “I’ll bring the gun in when the kids are asleep.”

“Thanks for thinking about that,” Beth said.

“Of course. I don’t want them to be scared.” Adam’s head was moving in a slow swivel, taking in the silent street. “I wish he would come.”

“That’s the last thing we want,” Kent said.

“I don’t mean that I’d like him to be here. But if he just came by and I could follow him to wherever the hell he’s hiding…”

“You would call the police,” Beth said. “Right?”

Adam didn’t answer. Kent was watching his wife’s face and knew that she was going to push the issue and for some reason he didn’t want her to, did not want her to derail his brother’s focus, despite knowing that it was a dangerous focus. He interrupted then, trying to change the direction the conversation had taken.

“Funny you remember that pass was to Fitzgerald. He didn’t catch many, but he got open on that one. I wonder whatever happened to him. I think he joined the Army, but I could be—”

“You remember if Rodney Bova had family down here?” Adam asked.

Kent was confused. This was the second time Adam had brought the name up now, and it was hard to imagine a more irrelevant name from their playing days.

“No,” he said, “I don’t. Why do you keep asking about him?”

“He’s still around,” Adam said. “Got into some trouble, I came across him. I don’t remember him well, you know? I wish that I did. I just remember that he got sent to juvie, but I couldn’t come up with the details to save my life. You reminded me that he set fire to the car. I wouldn’t have been able to—”

“He didn’t set fire to the car,” Beth said, and they both looked at her with surprise. She was standing between them with her arms crossed under her breasts, watching Adam with curiosity. “It was his brother. He tried to take the blame for it.”

“How do you know that?” Kent asked.

“Dad talked about it. He was disturbed by the whole thing. Police interviewed him, or a counselor maybe? Somebody interviewed him, and—”

“His brother?” Adam said. His stare was heat-lamp intense, and Kent looked at him and said, “What’s this about? Why do you care so much?”

Adam considered the question for a long time before he said, “I’m responsible for him now. So he matters to me.”

“You posted bond for him?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he do this time?”

“Drug charges. Weapons possession.” Adam was looking at Beth again. “I didn’t remember that he had a brother.”

“He was younger. Dad thought he was going to be real trouble. Said he seemed to influence Rodney, not the other way around. Which is strange, because the older brother usually”—she hesitated—“sets the tone.”

“Usually,” Adam agreed. “But I thought Rodney went to a juvenile detention center.”

“I don’t think so. Maybe he did. He went into the state’s care, somehow, some way. But when it came to that fire, it wasn’t him. His little brother did it, and Rodney took the blame. His story didn’t hold together very well, though. Dad went to see him, and I think he might have suspected it pretty early, just like the police did. He was just trying to protect his brother.”