“You asked me why I came home. You was right. It wasn’t just about Pop. That was a part of it, but it was more about me,” Titus said. “Give me that damn jar back.”
Marquis handed it to him without a smart comment. Titus killed the rest of the ’shine in one long gulp.
“I’ve never told nobody else this. The Bureau swept it under the rug, after I resigned, of course. And there was no family to question the official version we put out,” Titus said. He slouched down in his chair. He was rapidly moving from tipsy to drunk, but the story he was going to tell his brother would only come out under the influence of strong liquor.
“In vino veritas,” Titus said.
“Huh?” Marquis said.
“Nothing. So, I moved from the Behavioral Science Unit to the Domestic Terrorism Unit. It had more opportunity for advancement, and I wanted to advance. I was seeing this woman who I wanted to take things to the next level with, and I was looking at buying a house and maybe putting down some roots in Indiana. Well, anyway, my first case with that department was a joint operation with the ATF and the DEA to take down a drug-dealing white supremacist who was stockpiling weapons in Northern Indiana named Ronald ‘Red’ DeCrain. Now, Red was not just a drug-dealing, racist piece of shit, he was also a fucking cult leader. He had about fifty die-hard followers out at his compound. We got a guy on the inside who helped set up a deal where Red and his crew, who were all convicted felons, bought stolen guns across state lines.” Titus paused.
“They broke enough laws, everybody could get a piece of the pie. So we loaded up the black SUVs and put on our tactical gear and went to arrest Red and five of his top lieutenants. My colleagues in the BCI gave us an assessment of Red DeCrain. They said he didn’t have a martyr complex. That he wouldn’t fight to the death. They were partly right. But the part they got wrong … well, that was fucking terrible,” Titus said. He reached for the jar, realized it was empty, and set it back on the floor of the porch.
“I’ll spare you the gory details, but it was a bloodbath. They knew we were coming. Our inside man got compromised and gave up the raid after they cut off three of his toes. We got pinned down for a bit, then we started pushing them back. Me and a friend of mine, Special Agent Tolliver Young, moved into the compound, followed by four ATF agents,” Titus said. He stopped talking and blinked his eyes.
“Ty, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Marquis said.
“I need to. And you’re the only person I can tell.”
“You sure? Because you look like you seen a fucking ghost,” Marquis said.
“Let me say it, Key. I have to. I have to tell it all,” Titus said.
He paused.
“We cornered Red. We thought he was trying to escape. He was with his wife and his three boys. The oldest was fourteen. The youngest was seven. Little towheaded boy, reminded you of Dennis the Menace.” Titus stopped again and swallowed hard.
“I told them to put their hands up and lay down on the ground. You know what he did? He grinned at me. True madness is like an aura around someone. It glows blue like the flame from a gas fire. That madness can spread. Become like religion for the lost. I saw it in the eyes of his wife and his kids. They were overcome with it like someone catching the Holy Ghost,” Titus said. He wiped his face with both hands.
“Then Red yelled, ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’ And his wife and their three sons pulled the pins on their suicide vests. It was like I’d fallen into the mouth of a dragon. Blinding-white light, incendiary heat that burnt off my eyebrows. If Tolliver hadn’t been standing in front of me, I would have died. They had filled their vests with ball bearings. He evaporated like a mist first thing in the morning. The four ATF agents were in a line shoulder to shoulder. They were blown to bits. I got a ball bearing in my abdomen just above my crotch,” Titus said as he untucked his shirt and pulled it up over his stomach. He touched the scar with his free hand.
“When I woke up, my ears were ringing so loud I couldn’t hardly think. I pulled myself to my feet. I slipped a few times because of all the blood. Bits of Tolliver and Red’s family were embedded in my face. They’re still there to this day. I lost twenty percent of the hearing in my right ear. Broke most of the teeth on the right side of my mouth. All of this.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth.
“It’s a plate. I was bleeding, my friend and our team were dead. Red DeCrain’s wife and sons were dead. Even the seven-year-old. He’d gotten a seven-year-old to kill himself because his daddy didn’t like Black and brown people. Everyone was dead except me … and Red DeCrain. Don’t get me wrong, he was fucked up. There was a hole in his thigh big enough to step in, but he was alive,” Titus said as he pulled his shirt back down.
“I went over to him and looked down at him. That idiot mindless craziness was still glowing around him. He spoke to me. He said he wanted to surrender. He wanted a doctor. He wanted me to handcuff him. He wanted to go be among his brothers inside. He wanted, he wanted, it was all about his wants. He didn’t say anything, not one word, about his wife or his kids or my friend or the men who walked into that viper’s nest with us. Just what he wanted,” Titus said. He flexed his fingers.
“Ever since Mama died, I had promised myself I would do what it took to keep people safe. That I would live my life with order and structure, because the world is cruel and capricious and it doesn’t give a damn about you, and the church that she loved and the God that she prayed to heal her are just placebos that don’t fix the poison we swim in every day. That’s why I went into law enforcement. To try and impose some order on the world, on my life. And here was Red DeCrain, chaos personified, who was gonna probably make it and live the next thirty or so years in comfort. Yeah, he’d be in jail, but he would be a made man inside unless he got the needle. This sick motherfucker who had made five women widows, who facilitated nothing but disorder and tragedy, was going to get to enjoy his life. I stared down at him and realized, what had following the rules ever really gotten me? What had trying to make order out of bedlam ever really done for me?” Titus paused. He took a deep breath, a huge inhalation that made him stretch his chest to its maximum width.
“So I shot him. Two to the head, two in the chest. I shot him as I stood there covered in what was left of his family and my friend. Another squad showed up just as I holstered my sidearm.” Titus grunted. “The Bureau quietly asked, well, told me to resign. They wrote a press release that made it seem like Red was armed when he was shot four times. I lost all my benefits, but I didn’t go to jail. Six months later, Pop had his operation.”
“You never told him? Your name never got in the paper?” Marquis asked.
Titus shook his head. “By the time my unemployment ran out and I came home, I had pretty much recovered. And they scrubbed my name from the official record, little brother. They worked hard to keep it as quiet as possible. Didn’t need another Waco. Only a few news outlets ran with the story. If you didn’t live in Indiana, you probably didn’t even hear about it. That was why, when the opportunity came up, I took it and ran for sheriff.”
“I don’t get it. You took out a racist, and that made you run for sheriff?” Marquis said.
“I killed a man. A terrible man, but a man nonetheless, and I got away with it because I was the law. I ran for sheriff because I didn’t want anyone here to get away with the things they did to us when we were growing up because they were the law. I wanted to … change things from the inside, I guess. That’s a lot easier said than done. But it’s my penance.”
“For somebody that don’t believe in God, you sure talk about religious shit a lot. Look, you don’t owe nobody nothing. You took out that racist? Good. You probably saved some lives. And you ain’t gotta try to keep stuff straight. Ain’t your job.”
“It sorta is my job, as sheriff. I keep thinking what would Mama say if she knew,” Titus said.
“You chose to be sheriff. And you can choose not to be. It ain’t up to you to fix everything cuz you couldn’t save Mama. Nobody could save her, Ty. Let me hit you with this one from our old Sunday school days. That idea you gotta save everything? That’s pride. And you know what they say about pride and the fall. I’m gonna say it again. You don’t owe nobody nothing. Not me, not Pops, not Mama, and not nobody in Charon. And, just for the record, Mama would probably say, ‘Shoot that motherfucker four more times,’” Marquis said.
Titus picked up the empty mason jar and studied the way the illumination from the porch light danced across its surface. “What if me trying to hold the world together is what keeps me from falling apart?”
“Fuck, Ty,” Marquis said.
He reached out his heavy hand and laid it on Titus’s shoulder as the night jays and whip-poor-wills sang a song for them in the dark.
TWENTY-FIVE