“You and me . . . we’re like two divers tethered to each other, dropping down into an underwater cave. What they call a blue hole. Down, down into the dark, to a place nobody’s ever seen and lived to tell, where there’s no light and no oxygen, nothing but the bones of those who went before.”
“You’re losing me, Lincoln.”
“Oh, you’re with me. You know what’s at the bottom of that hole?”
“What?”
“The truth.”
This got my attention. “And what’s the truth?”
“Another big word, like justice. Maybe the biggest one of all. One truth is, you spent your life trying to measure up to a father who was a liar. And I spent mine trying to save a piece of shit I thought was my father, but he dragged me down with him like a drowning man.”
I didn’t know what to say to this.
“But that ain’t the bottom truth,” Lincoln said. “That’s just currents in the water.”
“What’s the bottom truth?”
“Oh, no, my brother. You don’t learn that till you get to the bottom.” He held up a thick forefinger. “And we ain’t near ’bout there yet.”
“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go somewhere and sit down, just the two of us? We’ll drop the bullshit and come to some rational accommodation. How about it? These kinds of situations have been around for centuries, and people found a way to live with them.”
“You mean bastard sons and rightful heirs sitting down and working shit out?”
Money again. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
His eyes hardened into dark gemstones. “Man, you better wake the fuck up. It’s way too late for that.”
“Is it ever too late to do the right thing?”
“Ask my mama that.”
This silenced me. I thought about driving away, but something held me in the parking lot, under that smoldering gaze. The anger in Lincoln Turner was to the hatred of men like Snake Knox as a blowtorch to liquid nitrogen. If Lincoln wanted Annie dead, he would cut her throat on the steps of a church and feel justified in the eyes of God. Snake might do the same, but he would do it in cold blood.
“What did you say to my father when you visited him in jail?” I asked.
“My father, you said? You mean our father, don’t you? As in, ‘Our Father, who art in prison, cursed be thy name . . .’?”
The malicious edge in his voice sent a shiver along my arms.
“What would you say?” he asked. “What would you say to a man who’d left you and your mother to die on the side of the road?”
“Lincoln . . . he didn’t even know you existed until a few months ago.”
His eyes blazed. “Boy, you’re like a blind mole burrowing through rich soil. Don’t know what’s behind you, above you, or beneath you. You’re fat and happy, right up till the moment the patient farmer hammers a spike through your head.”
This image made my heart flutter. “Who’s the patient farmer? You?”
Lincoln laughed once more, big rolling waves of sound that rebounded between our two vehicles. “Daddy, bro. Who else? Big Daddy. You and me, we’re out here suffering, not knowing shit. And he’s over there in a federal country club being protected by the FBI. You ’splain that to me, huh?”
I said nothing. Lincoln had no interest in the agenda of John Kaiser or the FBI. He cared nothing about the Double Eagles or the Kennedy assassination.
“But in three weeks,” he went on, “they gonna move him back here to the Adams County jail—to that cracker Sheriff Billy Byrd’s jail. Then ol’ Pop’s gonna get a taste of real prison life. Yes, sir. It’s gonna be sweet. Karma sho’ is a bitch. You think about that, my brother from a different mother.” Lincoln stabbed a thick forefinger at me. “And you have a blessed day.”
He reached out and waved at Tim Weathers with mock friendliness, then put the truck in gear and peeled out of the parking lot with a shriek of rubber.
I don’t remember what Tim said when he walked up to check on me. Even now, sitting at my kitchen table with an empty cereal bowl staring up at me, I’m not sure why this confrontation returned with such vividness. Maybe because I know that the message I was given by the VK biker will have to be transmitted to my father. And the only person who can do that is me. If I’m going to visit Dad tomorrow, after not speaking to him since before Caitlin’s death, a lot of memories like this are going to boil up out of the darkness at the bottom of my mind. I suppose Lincoln Turner came up first because he’s the living symbol of my father’s sin. His sin, yes, and perhaps also his crime. It was Lincoln who set in motion the murder investigation that ultimately led Shadrach Johnson to charge my father with first-degree murder. And now Lincoln haunts my city—and my family—like some dark, retributive spirit.
“Penn? Are you okay?”
I look up to see Mia Burke pad into the kitchen wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt that falls to midthigh.
“I heard somebody moving around a while ago,” she says. “I thought it might be Tim or one of the guys.”
“No. I just couldn’t sleep.”
She gives me a knowing look. “How could you, after what happened tonight?”
When I don’t answer, she picks up my bowl, takes it to the sink, and begins washing it. In the half light she reminds me of my wife, though Mia looks nothing like Sarah did. Mia is dark-haired, compact, and muscular, where Sarah was light-haired, lithe, and tall, just as Annie is growing to be.
“You been watching that movie?” Mia says, not looking around.
“Not really.”
“There’s hardly any of the original Hemingway story left in it. But Faulkner wrote a lot of the script, I think. It’s kind of a poor man’s Casablanca.”
This is typical Mia, who often sounds thirty rather than twenty, and sometimes a lot older than that. I cannot imagine how I would have handled Annie’s crisis without her.
“I guess I’m going up,” she says, leaning back against the sink. “You want me to fix you some coffee or something? It’s not that long till sunup.”
I give her a smile filled with more gratitude than an offer of coffee demands. “No, thanks. I’m coming up, too. I need the rest. I’m going to see my dad tomorrow.”
This stops her cold. “Really?”
“Yeah. It’s time. But I’m not taking Annie with me. I’ll need your help to make that work out.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks, Mia.”
She walks into the hall first, and I switch off the TV and the light as I pass. We mount the staircase together, her a little in front, treading quietly so as not to wake Annie. At the top we pause, the moment slightly awkward, then with tight smiles we separate and go to our rooms.
As I lie back down, I remember that once, long ago, Mia told me how Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met and fell in love on the set of To Have and Have Not. He was forty-four, she nineteen. They married and remained happy until he died from cancer twelve years later. Tonight Mia did not remind me of that, but I do remember. It’s a strange life we have here, Mia and Annie and me. On some level, despite the disasters that made it necessary, I have enjoyed my time in this cocoon. But one thing is certain: it can’t go on forever. And something tells me that tomorrow, my visit to my father may set in motion the next act of our family tragedy.
Unless the bullets I fired earlier tonight already did that.
Chapter 4