“Oh, I remember.”
“He was lucky because of that, though. All the female attention, plus him being a star athlete, kept everyone from guessing he might be anything but straight. But late in his senior year, he started asking me questions. He sensed that I was gay, and about halfway through the tennis season, he got up the nerve to ask me about it.”
I nod to encourage him.
“I told Adam about my own experiences in high school. How tough it had been with the father I had. I was still in the closet, but a small number of people knew. My mother was one, thank God.” Hayden shifts his weight on the bench, then winces as though what he’s thinking about causes him physical pain. “The thing is . . . near the end of Adam’s senior year, he and I had an experience together. Then one more. That was it, just two times. He drowned shortly after that.”
A strange numbness is moving through my limbs.
“Adam was eighteen,” he goes on, “but I feel very ambivalent about what I did. Technically I was his coach, even though I wasn’t being paid. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I just . . . I feel like there was a side to Adam—not a side, really, but his essence—that no one knew about. On one hand, he was worshipped by everyone, but that didn’t mean much to him. Because no one really knew who he was. At least I don’t think so. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. To find out whether you knew that side of him. Or even suspected it.”
I’d like to be able to tell Hayden that I knew, that Adam had trusted me with his secret. Or failing that, that I’d known my brother well enough to figure it out on my own. But I hadn’t. I remained at the same distance as the other mortals. Perhaps a little closer . . . but not close enough.
“I didn’t know, Tim. I had no idea. He dated Jenny Anderson for two years, and I just assumed—”
“Everybody did.” He nods and smiles wistfully. “Their relationship wasn’t sexual, believe it or not.”
“I can’t believe I was that blind. I knew how sensitive Adam was, especially for a jock. Not that he was ever a jock, in the simplistic sense. He just had the talent. But there was something else in him. Empathy, I guess. And a kind of magnetism that pulled people to him. Men and women wanted to talk to him, to be around him. Old or young, it didn’t matter. Adam was just . . . different.”
Tim is nodding, his eyes bright with tears. “This must be strange for you. And hard. I hope I didn’t presume too much. I was afraid you might be furious at me.”
I shrug, then shake my head. “No point being angry now. Was he confused by the experiences? Or relieved? What?”
“All the above. Adam carried a lot on his shoulders. The hopes and dreams of a whole school, a whole town. And of course your father’s, too, heaviest of all.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Tim sits with his head bowed. Dark spots appear on the stones beneath his face. I’d like to comfort him, but I’m not sure how to make him feel better. Sitting mute, I flash back to the night before Adam died, the night we climbed the electrical tower beside the river. All that night, the Matheson cousins ragged us with the usual litany of high school insults. As I watch Tim Hayden crying in this little park, the main Matheson theme comes back to me with painful clarity: faggots, homos, queers. Even the stupid “Casey Jones” parody they jeered at me had homosexual references. I took those insults like water off a duck’s back, but Adam didn’t. For once, the taunts of idiots got under his skin. Was he in the grip of a sexual identity crisis on that night? Was that what drove him to the top of that tower to dance along the light strut like Dooley Matheson, six hundred feet in the air? Was that what pushed him to try to swim the river with me?
No, I tell myself. The tower, maybe. But Adam went into the river to protect me, his little brother. I still remember his words: If you drown out there, I can’t walk in our house and tell Mom and Dad I watched it happen. He couldn’t have imagined that it would be me rather than him who would face that soul-searing ordeal.
“Do you know when I think about Adam the most?” Hayden asks.
“When?”
“When I hear Jeff Buckley sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’”
“Yeah? Well, that’s a great song.”
“It is, but that’s not the reason. Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River. Did you know that?”
I feel like someone walked over my grave. “I didn’t. Where did he drown?”
“Memphis. When I hear Buckley singing ‘Hallelujah,’ I always hope that his soul and Adam’s found each other in that river.” Hayden smiles through his tears. “I sound crazy, right?”
“Actually no. I loved him, too. And I used to be a musician.”
“I didn’t know you could stop being a musician.”
This makes me smile. “You’re right. You never do.” I look at my wristwatch. “I hate to say it, but I have a meeting to get to.”
He wipes his face with the flat of his hand. “You’ve been great about this. It’s such a relief after so long. I hope you feel the same, after you’ve had time to process it.”
“I’m glad you told me. This seems to be the week that my whole life history gets explained to me. It’s like time is running backwards. I’m living from flashback to flashback.”
He gives me a sympathetic smile. “Do you think your parents had any idea about Adam?”
“No. And I wouldn’t bring this up to them. In fact, I’ll ask you not to. My father couldn’t take it, and my mother’s got enough to handle without wondering why she didn’t see it herself. She’ll start thinking that if only she’d recognized that, and nurtured it, Adam might still be alive.”
Hayden nods. “I understand completely. I won’t ever speak to them about it. I just wanted someone in the family to know.”
I get to my feet and reach out to shake his hand, but Hayden pulls me in for a hug. Feeling tears rise, I blink and wipe my eyes after I pull away.
“Thanks for this,” he says. “And please find out what happened to Buck. He was a good man.”
“I will.”
He turns and leaves through the little wrought-iron gate.
Nothing would ease my nerves in this moment more than to sit in this little park and go back over my brother’s life, searching for clues I missed while he was alive. But Claude Buckman and the Poker Club are waiting for me. I might as well go listen to their pitch. Shouldering my bag, I walk down Second Street to the Flex. Buckman’s bank is only a few blocks away, but I’d rather have my vehicle with me. There’s no telling where I might need to go after that meeting, or if I’ll need to get there in a hurry.
Chapter 31
The Bienville Southern Bank is a Greek Revival pile built in the 1880s by Claude Buckman’s grandfather. An exceptionally attractive receptionist escorts me to the second-floor conference room, where I find a massive rosewood table capable of seating twenty, but which today holds only five men: Claude Buckman, Blake Donnelly, Avery Sumner, Wyatt Cash, and Arthur Pine. Stripped of their names, I’m facing a predatory banker, an old-time oil tycoon, a newly minted U.S. senator, an entrepreneur with ties to the U.S. military, and a sleazy lawyer. What could possibly go wrong?
“Greetings, Mr. McEwan,” Claude Buckman says. “Come up and have a seat with us. There, beside Mr. Pine. I believe you know him.”
“I do.” I walk up the other side of the table and sit beside Wyatt Cash.
Except for the conference phone sitting at the center of the table, this room could have been furnished in the 1860s. The prints on the walls appear to have been chosen by someone intent on celebrating the pre–Civil War South: Confederate soldiers, racing steamboats, cotton wagons, cotton trains, belles in hoop skirts, and—in almost every photo—slaves. Slaves driving wagons, crewing steamboats, serving drinks to officers; whole black families bent in a cotton field, with children too small to drag a sack sitting in a turnrow, playing in the dirt.
“Are you carrying any recording devices?” Buckman asks as I take my seat.