The Last September: A Novel

He would have had a hard time smiling at Eli, in the condition he must have been in. At some point, the two of them would have stood out on the deck together. Just up the street from the Moss house, directly across the bluff, a man who’d made a fortune with some sort of computer-related invention had built a house so large that it looked like a Carnival Cruise ship riding the night sky. He wouldn’t have been here in September, but the floodlight he’d installed to light his American flag shone year round, damaging the view of the stars. Charlie might have complained about this, pointing out to Eli the new difficulty locating the Milky Way. Or he might have gotten to business directly. “Eli,” he might have said. “We said you couldn’t stay here unless you were taking your meds. It’s obvious you’re not, so you need to leave in the morning.” Just then Eli, his rage stoked, might have seen the long-handled hammer, left on the plank of the ladder. Charlie never put anything away.

I turned the page of the photo album. There was a photograph of the two boys sharing some kind of drink, a soda or a milkshake, their heads pressed together—Charlie already a lanky child, Eli still with the chubby limbs of a toddler. Here was the era of Sylvia, pictures of her smiling, usually with Eli in her arms. In later pages, the brothers posed with trophies, tennis for Eli, sailing for Charlie. Charlie was taller than Eli, and stronger. That day on the lawn Eli’s skin had looked pasty and white, his muscles slack from disuse, whereas Charlie’s skin was brown from the sun, and fine sinewed muscles pulled taut along his arms. If Eli had come straight at him, Charlie would have stopped the hammer.

Perhaps Charlie took a moment to lean against the railing and complain about the change in the sky. Maybe he lit a cigarette, something he did occasionally to keep Eli company. He might have said something about me, the reason I wasn’t there. “Brett could tell from the last time you called that you weren’t taking your meds.”

What might Eli have said at the mention of my name? That a hundred years ago I would have been a prostitute? In frustration and sadness, Charlie might have dropped his head into his hands. Or just narrowed his eyes and looked down to snuff out the cigarette in the seashell ashtray. Enough time for Eli to grab the hammer and bring it down with lunatic force; not enough time for Charlie to stand up straight, turn around, and exert his superior strength.

One blow to stun Charlie sideways, lurching and surprised. Another blow to bring him to the ground as he tried to stagger upright. With the second blow, the blood began, and then a third that sprayed country fair splatter on Eli’s white shirt. There was a picture in one of the photo albums of Eli making one of those spray paintings, squirting paint from a plastic ketchup bottle into the whirling vortex, his head bent, serious and intent.

The coroner said it was the fourth blow that killed Charlie; by then, he would have been on the ground, unconscious. For this killing blow, the perpetrator turned the hammer around and used the claw. There must have been some sign from Charlie—a final gurgle or cessation—to signal that the attack could stop. And then the killer returned with the knife.