Son of Destruction

12




The guys


It’s a nice enough day out here on the water, but it’s getting late. Not that Stitch Von Harten and Buck Coleman want their afternoon on the water to end. Every Friday they find ways to back out of the office – Stitch from Von Harten Printing, which his dad founded, and Buck from Coleman Chrysler, where he shows up only reluctantly because his father hung the business around his neck like a stone.

Every Friday they come out here with a couple of six-packs, whether the grouper are running or not. Stitch knows it sounds cheesy, but it’s their special time. They’re dragging their feet because of the party. They did their part – they’re paying for it, stood back and admired the dresses their wives bought for the event – should be enough. The hell of it is, they’re under orders to show up early, to help Cathy and Buck’s pretty wife Kara cope. They’re supposed to be home in time to shower and shave, break out the clippers for nose-hairs and put on the clothes the wife laid out for them and stand there until she approves.

They will do their job and walk in smiling, but, shit. All that social agro and nicey-niceness when there are egrets and blue heron in these waters, astonishing birds that take Stitch’s heart with them when they take flight. If he had his druthers, he and Buck would be out in the boat watching the sun go down, but time is thumbing its nose at them and they have to go.

‘F*ck,’ Stitch says. ‘How did we get to be so old?’

‘We’re not old, we’re just domesticated,’ Buck says. For a guy who’s spent his adult life grieving, Buck is more or less content. ‘We were hot shit, weren’t we? Back in the day?’

Stitch laughs. ‘Still are. But I see what you’re saying. At reunions, they’re sizing us up, looking for things to cut off.’

‘Because we ruled that school.’ Buck hasn’t exactly pulled up the anchor. He is staring out at the bridge. ‘We were good, weren’t we?’

‘We were.’

Moodily, Buck cracks another beer. ‘We didn’t know how sweet it was.’

Stitch has problems of his own, but he prefers not to dwell. He says sympathetically, ‘Nut cancer. What a bitch.’

‘Oh, that. That’s nothing.’ Buck looks up. ‘We had everything, and we f*cked it up.’

‘Only at the end.’ Stitch knows where this is going. ‘Darcy. We all felt bad.’

The summer before senior year Buck’s dad told the twins their future was Coleman Chrysler, no ifs, ands or buts. Darcy Coleman was drunk by noon. By four, he was crazy-ruined – they couldn’t cut him off, couldn’t bring him down. At midnight Buck’s twin drove a demo model off the lot and crashed into the biggest tree on Beach Drive. It took hours to pry him out. Buck threw himself in on top of Darcy, like he wanted to be buried too. He’s been going around like half a person ever since.

Then Buck surprises him. ‘No. I mean the end of senior week. You know when.’

Stitch knows exactly when and he groans out loud. ‘Right.’

‘If Darcy’d been there, she’d have stayed back. No room in the Jeep.’ Buck is getting weird and agonized. ‘It wouldn’t of come down the way it did.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up over things you can’t help.’ Stitch starts the motor so he won’t have to hear what Buck says in reply. He takes off in high and doesn’t slow down until they turn into the estuary off Pierce Point.

They are in low, putt-putting along the shoreline to the Marina when Buck says, ‘Look!’ He can’t point; it’s too obvious. He jerks his head at the shore. Weird business: they are being watched.

‘Holy crap,’ Stitch says, and he means it in a good way. ‘That’s Walker Pike.’ Even from here, although he is half-blind without his glasses, Stitch knows. Pike is so unlike them that there’s no mistaking it: that cigar-store Indian profile, the proud lift of the head. Even back in high school he was a little scary, strung tight as a string on a crossbow. Not Like Us. Stitch Von Harten personally has changed shape in the years intervening and so has Buck. It happens, but not to Walker Pike.

If anything, he stands taller, so lean and easy in his body that Buck sucks in his belly at the sight. ‘F*ck, in high school he was nothing. Now look.’

‘Yeah. Pierce Point trash,’ Stitch says. ‘What goes around comes around someplace else, I guess.’ Walker Pike that they used to walk past without speaking is somebody now, sitting there on the deck of his neat redwood house with its glittering solar panels. ‘I heard he invented Google or Ebay or some damn thing. Now he’s rich as God. Look at that house!’

‘Yeah. Kara says it’s in Architectural Forum, just what you can see from here. They never got inside.’

‘All that, and he wouldn’t let them in?’

‘He always was one weird bastard.’ Stitch waves. ‘Hey, Walker.’

‘Look, he sees us! Walker, hey.’

‘Remember us?’ Not that Walker would recognize him, heavy as he is. ‘It’s Stitch and Buck, Buck Coleman? From Fort Jude High?’

Fluid, fearsomely easy within his body, Pike stands. Like a priest, he lifts one hand, showing them the blade but stopping short of the blessing. Then he turns and goes inside.

Stitch says, ‘Well, it’s nice to see you too. Son of a bitch couldn’t afford a clean T-shirt when we knew him. Now look.’

Buck is slapping at his pockets. He motions to Stitch to shut the motor. ‘Phone. Crap. Too late.’

‘Probably the girls, getting on our case.’ In Stitch’s pocket, his phone is vibrating off the hook. He pulls it out and checks caller I.D. ‘Wait. No. It’s Chape. Buck, it’s Chape. Yo, Chape!’ He listens carefully. ‘There’s trouble with Brad. He wants us at the shack. We’re on our way,’ he says into the phone and slaps it shut. ‘Damndest thing. He says Chaplin’s coming.’

‘Well, shit.’ Buck looks happier than he has all day, probably because unlike them, all-American high school hero Bob Chaplin is slipping, so much for the leader of the pack. Every man needs somebody to look down on, and now it’s Chaplin’s turn. ‘It’ll be nice to see him. He’s been home, how long? It’s damn well time he showed himself.’