A Brilliant Death (23 page)

“Yeah, you got so scared that you pissed yourself.”

“I pissed myself because you left me straddling the rafters atop your sleeping father for three hours in hundred-degree heat!”

Travis frowned. “You’re being a puss. What are you afraid of?”

“Oh, well, let me think—Big Frank. Bodily harm. Death. All of the above. Pick one. If you find those letters and want to hide them in my bedroom, fine. But I’m not going to be anywhere near Big Frank’s bedroom.”

He grinned again. “I know you want to.”

I paused to take a breath. “When were you thinking of undertaking this expedition?”

“Friday night. Frankie’s got a new girlfriend, and you know how he gets when he’s got a new girl. He’s never home.”

“Who is it?”

He shrugged. “Beats me. Angel Somethingorother. She’s from Follansbee and giggles a lot. That’s all I know. I’m sure she has a last name, most of them do, but I prefer to lump them into the category of the most recent winner of the Frank Baron Punch-of-the-Month Contest. He spends every Friday and Saturday night at her house. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

“Where, precisely, were you going to look?”

“Under his bed, in his trunk and dresser drawers, I guess.” I covered my ears and began singing the national anthem. He removed my right hand. “Come on, be a buddy and help me.”

“Travis, it doesn’t take two guys to rifle an underwear drawer. My mom does it all the time. No way. This is where I’m drawing the line. You’re crazy for even thinking about it. The letters are not going to help you find out anything substantial about your mom, except that Clay Carter was crazy in love with her. You don’t need them to prove that Big Frank used them to blackmail Clay’s father. You know he’s capable of that, and it’s probably true. Only bad things can come from this. Big Frank will catch you, and when he does, you’re meat. He’ll stomp you to dust.”

“Come on, where’s Sir Mitchell the Bold? I know that brave knight would help me.”

“Trav . . .” He smiled and arched his left brow.

“What would I have to do?”

“Sentry. Easiest job in this man’s army.”

The target date was the last Saturday in September. Travis competed in a six-team cross country meet at eight in the morning, which he won by eighteen seconds and set a school record, then sold programs for the senior class at the football game against Yorkville that afternoon. He stopped by my house after the game for a Reuben sandwich with my extended family. Travis hung around the living room with me and the cousins and replayed the win over the Ductilites.

My cousin Johnny said, “You guys don’t suck nearly as bad as you used to.”

“We’re undefeated,” I countered.

“Yeah, but you’re still not very good.”

“Yeah, and you’re not very smart, and that’s not likely to change.”

He raked his fingers under his chin at me. I walked into the kitchen. No one could get under my skin like my cousin Johnny.

Travis left without stating his plans for the evening. As he walked out the door, Mom shoved an uncooked Reuben wrapped in aluminum foil into his hand and gave him instructions on how to heat it in the oven. He looked a sad figure walking down the street, alone, a sandwich in one hand, the first-place medal he had won at the cross country meet in the other. He had been quite proud of the medal, which he had worn under his jacket at the football game, pulling it out to flash at me as we took the field for warm-ups. The athletic director had made a big deal of the school record and brought Travis out on the track at halftime to announce the accomplishment to the crowd. It should have been a big day for Travis, the cap to the kind of day most kids just dream about—breaking a school record and being recognized in front of the entire town. I’m sure he would have liked to have someone to share his success with, but we all knew he was heading to an empty house.

An hour after he left the house, he called, and I slipped out. He was standing behind the sagging screen door when I arrived. “Where do you want me stationed?” I asked.

“Come on up. I just wanted some company.”

“You just want a witness so Big Frank won’t kill you if he finds you snooping in his bedroom.”

“Nah, that doesn’t matter. He’d just kill us both.”

“That’s hilarious.”

Following a systematic search plan that he had worked out in his head, Travis began dissecting the room, starting with the cardboard boxes under the bed. The contents ranged from used automobile parts to more of Big Frank’s collection of hard-core porn magazines, but there were no letters, or anything else connected to Travis’s mother. It was a time-consuming process, and when he had finished going through his dad’s dresser, darkness had taken over the room.

“How do you know Big Frank didn’t put them in a safe deposit box?” I asked.

“He’s too cheap. Besides, the sonofabitch carries that forty-five with him everywhere. Who would want to try to steal something from him?”

“Think of what you just said.”

Using a flashlight that he pulled from his hip pocket, Travis began searching Big Frank’s closet. It was small and cramped, and the floor was littered with clothes.

“Why don’t you turn on the light?” I asked.

“Too dangerous. If he came back, he’d see the light before I ever heard the car.” The darkness made me nervous. I never feared the nearby railroad tracks or the trains during the day, but they were terrifying at night, when their cycloptic head beam eerily cleared their path, and their very passing vibrated the house and made my bedroom windows rattle in their frames. The closet revealed nothing of interest and the search seemed fruitless. Travis had searched under the bed, the closet, and both dressers. All that remained was the steamer trunk in the corner. It was unlocked, and Travis scooted the trunk away from the wall and pushed back the lid. The trunk was jammed full of Big Frank’s junk—medals, ribbons, and plaques from auto shows, a few car magazines, his parents’ brittle obituaries from the Steubenville
Herald-Star
, and assorted items that held no interest for Travis. Quickly, he pulled the items out of the trunk, setting them in a circle around him so he could return them in the same order.

The sound of a car passing by in the gravel behind the house was followed by a creak from downstairs. We both froze and listened. Nothing. It had been nothing more than the sighing of a tired house and the coincidental passing of a car. Still, it had given my nerves a jolt. “Come on, Trav, hurry up,” I said.

He hurried though the rest of the trunk. With everything scattered on the floor, he could see nothing that resembled a letter. “Crap. Nothing here, either.” As Travis put the contents back in the trunk, trying his best to remember the order in which they had left, he found a faded, four-page brochure:
Installation and Operation of your Hide-a-Safe.
Travis looked at the brochure, finding a series of numbers on the back page.

“Run down to the kitchen. There’s a scratch pad and pencil on the table. I need you to write something down.” I did as he asked and was back in seconds. He said, “Nine, sixteen, fourteen . . .”

“Nine, sixteen, fourteen,” I repeated.

“Thirty-eight, one.”

“Got ’em.”

For the next thirty minutes, we scoured the house, basement to attic, looking for the safe. “How can you hide a safe like that around here? This place isn’t that big,” Travis complained. “We’ve checked every wall in the place—basement, bedrooms, living room, everywhere.”

“Maybe he didn’t put it in a wall,” I suggested. “Maybe he buried it in a floor.”

Travis looked at me, that crooked grin stretched across his face. “It’s in the garage.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, or in the basement.”

“No. It’s in the garage. I know right where it is—under his tool chest. He’s got it covered with a piece of concrete. I asked him about it once when I was little and he blew me off—wouldn’t answer. That’s exactly where it is.”

I was excited by the prospects. “Let’s go.”

Big Frank kept an extra key to the side door of the garage hanging on a nail just inside the basement door. The key unlocked both the door lock and the two deadbolts. “Let’s get in there, get the letters, and take them back to your place,” Travis said. “After I’ve read them, I’ll put ’em back.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We slipped through the door and pushed it nearly closed. The Chevy, buffed and gleaming in the dim light of the neon clock on the wall, rested in its usual spot. Travis shined his flashlight against the large, red tool box against the back wall. “I’m getting nervous. Maybe we should abort,” I said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Travis asked.

“Maybe we should wait until he’s out of state on a trip,” I offered.

“No. It’s safe. Come on, let’s do it.” The tool box was on wheels and we easily moved it away from the wall, exposing a square block of concrete. Buried in each side of the concrete were two threaded receptors. Travis grabbed a handful of bolts from a coffee can on the workbench and worked them at the receptors until he found two that fit; they were nine-sixteenths. Using them as handles, he pulled the concrete block out of its resting place, revealing the face of the safe. It was gray, about a foot square, and resting in a cocoon of cement, a patina of rust developing along its exposed edges. The combination dial was off-center to the left, the handle to the right. I held the flashlight on the dial and read the combination aloud. It took Travis several tries before the handle moved freely. He took a nervous breath, opened the door to the safe and shined the light inside. There were only a few items lying on the bottom of the safe—the deed to the house, the title to Frank’s prized Chevy, and a packet of envelopes wrapped in a rubber band.

The envelopes were tattered and yellowing badly around the edges. There were about twenty in the bundle, each marked in block letters, “Amanda.” Each had been carefully opened by being slit across the top. Travis crouched down, leaning against the wall with the envelopes resting in his lap, the beam of the flashlight throwing a hazy light. He took the top envelope and held it between his fingers, gently, like an archaeologist might cradle a precious find. “I feel like I’m invading her privacy,” he whispered.

“If Big Frank has read them, it was invaded a long time ago.”

“I’m sure she never dreamed that her son would be reading letters from her lover.”

“I’ll give you that one.” The adrenaline rush of sneaking into Big Frank’s garage had masked the fact that my bladder was about to explode. “I thought you were going to take the letters and leave.”

“In a minute.”

“Well, if we’re not getting out of here right now, I need to whiz.” He used the flashlight as a pointer, throwing a beam of light on the little bathroom that Big Frank had built into the corner of his garage. I followed it into the room.

I stood in front of the toilet for a minute, allowing my eyes time to adjust to the near total darkness. When I could finally make out the rim of the toilet, I started to fumble with my zipper. I thought of how Travis’s life would have been different if Clay Carter had been his father. I envisioned Travis with a normal, happy family. In my mind’s eye I could see Travis as a youngster, maybe four years old, playing on the beach with the mother that I knew only from a photograph, and a younger Clay Carter. They were all smiling and laughing as they built a sand castle on the shore. That was the image in my mind as I grabbed my dick to relieve myself, the same instant that the overhead light to the garage came on.

“Find anything interesting, boy?” Big Frank Baron asked.

“Shit,” Travis said.

“Thought I’d bring Angel down for some fish at the American Legion, and as I was driving by I wondered, why is there someone in my garage with a flashlight?”

I tried to stuff myself back into my jeans and stem the flow of urine. I succeeded in getting it in my pants, but failed miserably at stopping the flow. Again, hot piss ran down my front, soaking my jeans and running into my socks. I froze, concealed in the darkness of the bathroom. I turned, and through the slit in the door I could see the scene unfolding.

Big Frank was standing in front of the door, blocking Travis’s only escape route. “Come here, boy,” Big Frank said.

“What are these?” Travis asked, standing and holding the letters in his right hand.

Lord, but I admired his guts.

“They’re mine and none of your fuckin’ business, that’s what they are.” He pointed to the safe. “Put them back and come here.”

Travis shook his head. “You said you didn’t know who her boyfriend was.”

“I said, put those letters back in the safe and come here.”

“I’m through taking orders from you. Why do you have these?”

“That ain’t none of your concern, either. Give ’em to me.”

“Why would you keep them? Huh? Why would you keep Mom’s love letters from another man? Unless, of course, you were hoping you could blackmail someone. Maybe get another car out of the deal? But if you tried to do that, Clay Carter might kick your ass again.”

Travis, shut up, I thought.

It was too late, though. Big Frank had all he was going to take. He moved away from the front of the Chevy and started toward Travis. In the illuminated doorway, Big Frank’s girlfriend appeared and hollered, “Frankie, what are you doing?”

He turned his head and yelled back, “I’ll be back in a minute. Go sit in the car.”

As he turned his head, Travis tried to dash past his dad, hoping to leap the hood of the Chevy and escape into the night. Despite his quickness, the garage was too small and Big Frank too close. Before Travis could jump, Big Frank threw a forearm into his son’s ribs, driving him off his feet and sending him flying into the edge of the work bench. The envelopes flew out of his hand and fell like confetti. The air rushed from Travis’s lungs as his ribs hit the bench. Before he could stagger to his feet, Big Frank grabbed him by his ears and lifted him up. The fight was over. All that remained now was punishment. “Don’t ever let me catch you in this garage again,” Frank Baron said in an eerily calm voice. He released the ears and backhanded Travis across the side of his head, his ring opening up a gash over Travis’s right ear and sending him to the floor. “I hope you understand me, boy,” Big Frank said, grabbing Travis by the back of his shirt and carrying him like a bitch with a pup. He hauled Travis just outside the door and threw him face first into the dirt and gravel. Angel backed away from the scene, her hands behind her feeling for the car. “I told you to go wait in the car, goddammit.”