Son of Destruction

8




Dan Carteret


Not every decision Dan makes is rational. They said, ‘Your mom just died. Don’t try to make big decisions or operate heavy machinery until you’re over it.’ Yeah, right. He dropped everything and flew to Fort Jude – on what? Two snapshots and a gold plated football. Weird stories about human furnaces, printed out at a Kinko’s in New London.

What was he thinking?

That his mother stashed her past in that box on her high dresser for him to find, but it’s a long way from there to here.

His first try fell flat – ten minutes, an hour ago – how long has he been sitting here under a tree outside the Publix? Stupid, thinking he could walk up to the house in Lucy’s snapshot and find Family. Grandparents. Aunts. That they’d hug him, all, My how you’ve grown, ply him with milk and cookies and tell him everything. Or that Lucy’s secret lover would show up for the Greek recognition scene: Father! The smack of flesh on flesh colliding. Son!

Instead there was only Chaplin. Was the curtain moving in the Magic Kingdom turret behind him, a woman peeking out? He can’t be sure. He should have stuck it to the charming bastard while he had him, flashed the Jeep snapshot, but Chaplin is too – what. Faded to be one of them. Even thinking about it makes his belly shrink. The man was laid open, standing out there in the road with his hands floating up like origami cranes.

Shit, Dan should have stuck it to him. —You knew her, you probably took this f*cking picture.

The trouble is, he can’t prove it. He should have homed in: —What else would she be doing out in front of your house, back when you could still afford to paint it? Back when she was happy.

He should have leaned on Chaplin, hard. —What changed her, or is it who? Was it you?

He was too seized up to ask, —Are you him?

He isn’t ready yet. Afraid Chaplin will say yes and when Dan gets old, he’ll be weak and apologetic, just like him. Coward, he took directions to the Archambault house, thanked the guy, got back his car and left. It’s not like he was running away, he just couldn’t be there, OK? Not that he’s dodging that particular question. It’s just too soon.

In fact, he is running ahead of the answer.

He used to think anything was possible; kids do. When he found his real dad everything would change. When Lucy said it wasn’t Burt his heart jumped. Now! But she bound him with, He wouldn’t want you to know. The rest is gnawing its way out of his belly now. What was she afraid to tell him? That his genetic package contains a wild card, he decides. That he’s been holding it since birth. He knows in his gut that there’s something waiting inside him that he has no name for, some buried shame or latent power or unimaginable secret, and here in the town where his mother grew up and – he thinks – met his father and fell in love, the knowledge leaves him laid wide open.

Waiting for it to show itself.

It can’t be Chaplin. He has to know. He runs his fingers along his jaw, divining the bony structure. He and Lucy have the same eyes, but the shape of his skull comes from someone else, not that polished failure he left paddling in the road. He holds his hands up to the light, half-expecting to see the truth outlined in the tapering fingers or written in the network of veins on his naked arms. A man with superpowers would see everything, down to the last capillary, illuminated, but this is just Dan Carteret, hunched in the dirt under a tree in the Publix parking lot in Fort Jude Florida, wondering.

He needs to look into his father’s face and see.

How he will age. Whether he can be happy.

What he will become.

Too much bad coffee, no food and no sleep breed questions. They swarm round his head like gnats. Batting them away, he lurches to his feet like Swamp Thing and goes into the Publix to refuel. He grabs potato chips, hot dog buns to sop up stomach acids – when did he eat? Nuts and Slim Jims for protein, Red Bull for that caffeine jolt and the essential sugar rush. He carts his stuff outside and sits down in the shade to eat.

He starts a list.

Scope the Archambault house, now that you’re here. Take digis and make notes so you can write a feature to justify your presence here. Find neighbors who lived here back in the day, before the neighborhood went to crap. Line up interviews for tomorrow, when you’re not so fried. Go back to the hotel for a WiFi connection and file a pitch. Then you can crash. Tomorrow, look for Lucy’s life before him, find it in the morgue at the Fort Jude Star.

Good, he thinks. A sensible plan.

But Lucy’s snapshots seethe in his pocket like unanswered letters or overdue bills: his smiling mother, clasping her notebook in front of Chaplin’s house. She was there that day for a reason. The more he thinks about it, more he knows he isn’t finished there. When the camera caught her with that lovely smile, was she coming out or going in? Chaplin damn well knows. What else does Chaplin know?

What she was really like, Dan thinks bitterly. Before.

Standing, he heads for Archambault’s, but his mind is stuck somewhere between here and there.

In the lexicon of next things, there’s one more thing he has to do today. If he can prove that Chaplin knows her, he’ll nail the bastard to the wall. F*ck yes he knew her. In a town this small, how could he not? All he needs is a clipping, yearbook, prom photo to link the two of them, or letters . . . just something he kept.

He has to go back to Pine Vista. Tonight. When you think your source is hiding something you lean on him, hard, but Dan is too messed up to tell whether Chaplin is hiding something or just plain hiding out in that Spanish stucco heap. This time he’ll go armed. Bring takeout. This may take a while. Jumbo coffee. Maybe a six-pack. Eat while you wait. Black jeans, he decides, black T-shirt so nobody sees you out there in the night; sneakers, so they won’t hear you creeping up.

He’ll hole up in the car for as long as it takes, waiting for him to go to bed. No, better. To go out.

Then he’ll break in.