Gibson sat in an armchair beside the bed and opened two of the RC Colas that he’d brought—the judge’s favorite—placed one on the nightstand even though the judge wouldn’t drink it, and clinked the glass necks together. He sat watching the judge sleep.
“Did I ever write you about the accident?” Gibson asked the judge. Gibson and the judge had traded letters for years, but Gibson couldn’t remember if he’d ever mentioned it. He hadn’t thought of the accident in almost ten years, but it had been on his mind the last few days. “I had a forty-eight-hour leave, but a hurricane had made landfall in North Carolina and was dumping rain up and down the seaboard. Authorities were telling people to stay off the roads, but I hadn’t seen Nicole in months, and there was no way in hell I was spending it on base. So I borrow a buddy’s car—a little Corolla—and I haul ass home. Funny thing was, because of the warnings, the roads were deserted, so I made great time. I remember being in the outside lane, going too fast. Stupid, but I just want to get home and see my girl.” Gibson paused, picturing the moment. “Coming around this slight bend, the car hydroplaned. Started spinning. I took my hands off the steering wheel because I didn’t want to be holding anything when this piece-of-crap Corolla slammed into the trees at eighty miles an hour. It was like being on one of those Tilt-A-Whirl rides at the fair. Three perfect revolutions across the highway. Everything slowed down the way it does. I remember this moment when I knew I was going to die and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It was weirdly peaceful.”
The judge slumbered, oblivious. In a way, Gibson envied him.
“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. How lucky I got. One second, I’m spinning, the next I’m sitting on the side of the highway facing the wrong way. They’d lined the side of the highway with these big rocks that had stopped the car like a ship running aground. I was fine. Airbags didn’t even deploy. Bottom of my buddy’s car was chewed all to hell, though.”
Gibson opened another bottle of RC and sat in silence, thinking. He felt like he was in that car again, spinning out of control.
“Sometimes I think you should have sent me to prison like the senator wanted. Better for everyone.”
The judge had offered Gibson the Marine Corps instead of prison. It had been the greatest kindness anyone had ever done him, and it felt dishonest and self-pitying to wish it away. He might not be wanted in his daughter’s life, but going to prison would also have meant that Ellie would not have been born. Wishing he’d gone to prison was selfish, pure and simple, and absolutely typical. Like the fact that visiting the judge was just one more piece of his alibi, should anyone come asking for it.
The room was warm, and Gibson dozed off in the armchair. He woke late in the afternoon, groggy and stiff. He yawned and sat up to stretch. Across the bed, Deja Noble sat lazily shelling pistachios. He recoiled at the sight of her, unsure if she was real or another figment. Either way, he felt the calm return that had abandoned him when he’d locked Damon Ogden into his cell. She looked up at him under the wild mane of her Mohawk and carried on prying open pistachios one at a time.
“Thought you was going to sleep all day,” she said.
“Could’ve used it.”
“I hear that.” She came to a pistachio that wouldn’t open and held it up, looking for a seam. “Don’t you hate that shit? Moving along, got a rhythm going on, and then, bam, a nut won’t crack. Look at this stubborn little bitch here. What to do, right? Do I work this mother over until it gives it up?” Deja held open her jacket to show Gibson the gun holstered under her arm. “I know I smash it with Roscoe here, it’ll sure enough open right quick, but for what? Everything inside be smashed too. Seems foolish. Got me thinking—Deja, there got to be a better option.”
“You could let it go. You have a whole bag there. Why get hung up on one?”
“The pragmatic choice. One way to go.” Deja contemplated the pistachio. “‘Americans don’t want to think. They want to know.’ My man John Dewey said that. Me? I think Americans don’t want to know. They want to believe. Want to feel. That’s why I can’t be throwing away no stubborn pistachio. ’Cause then I gotta be thinking about it. Wondering what’s inside that make it be that way. Afraid if I don’t find out, when I pull the next one out of the bag that I make the same mistake again. My people gotta believe that won’t happen. You understand what I’m saying?”
A nurse stuck her head in the door to say that visiting hours were ending in fifteen minutes. They acknowledged her without breaking eye contact with each other. Judge Hammond Birk snored softly between them.
“I think you made that point loud and clear already,” Gibson said.
“Weren’t nobody home. Ain’t nobody got dead. Can’t say the same for my crew in West Virginia, you feel me?”
“So what now?”
“Your house . . . that what the government call a proportional response.”
“Is that what that was?” Gibson said.
“That’s what it is. And that’s the way it can stay.”
“If . . . ?”
“If I think we understand each other. See here, the danger of a proportional response is it embolden the ahistorical motherfucker. You ahistorical, Gibson Vaughn? You think you an innocent who been wronged? Thinking on revenge? Or you know your history? Admit hostilities began with you and recognize the proportionality herein?”
“If I do, then I get to walk out of here?”
“Your boy Swonger alive, ain’t he?”
“Yeah, but you needed the farm. He works for you.”
“Why? You want to come work for old Deja?” she said with a sly smile.
“I don’t do that kind of work anymore.”
Deja tossed the keys to his Yukon over the bed. “Yeah, inspiring how you gone straight.”
The keys bounced off his hand, and he bent to pick them up. When he sat back up, Deja was standing and sweeping a pile of pistachio shells into a trash can.
“So what’s it to be, Gibson Vaughn?” Deja asked.
It was funny. While he’d been busy plotting revenge on Damon Ogden, Deja Noble had been doing the same to him. He supposed Duke would make the case for retaliation. But Gibson didn’t see what good it would do. It wasn’t as if taking Ogden had fixed anything.
But he was avoiding the issue at hand. He’d made a promise to Gavin Swonger to leave Deja be. “Proportional,” he said. “It was proportional.”
“And I won’t see you down VA Beach without an invitation.”
“I don’t even like the beach.”
Deja nodded. “Yeah, it ain’t healthy down there for pale white boys. All right, be cool now. Drive safe.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask one.”
“Did it make you feel better?”
Deja considered it. “No. Felt worse. But feeling better ain’t even the point.”
“So what is?” Gibson asked.