A Brilliant Death (24 page)

Frank Baron crouched down over the limp body of his son. I was expecting a kick to the ribs or face. Apparently, Travis was expecting it, too, because he curled and covered. “Now, this is the last time I’m going to tell you this: Knock it off. I know what you’ve been doing, snooping around, trying to find out shit about your mother—you and your fuck buddy Malone. I want it to stop, and I want it to stop now. This is a small town, boy, and you’d be surprised what all I hear. I know you talked to Clay Carter, and I heard that you been talkin’ to that cocksucker Chase Tornik. I don’t know what you think you’re looking for, but it’s over. You think you want to know about your mom, but you really don’t. Trust me. You might find out things you wished you didn’t know, like that she was a cheating, fucking whore.” Frank took a few sucks of breath. “You best let it go. And if I ever find you snooping around in my shit again, it’ll be the last time, son or not.”

I remained still as Big Frank walked back into the garage and picked up the scattered letters. He got them all, except for one that had neatly slid between the windshield and the wiper arm on the passenger side. It looked like a parking ticket pressed against the glass, but he didn’t spot it. He took the wad of letters in his fat hand and flicked off the lights as he walked out of the garage. A few seconds later I heard the locks click. About ten minutes later, Travis rapped on the door. “Hey, fuck buddy, the coast is clear. You can come out.”

I plucked the envelope from the windshield as I passed and slipped it into my back pocket. “Glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” I said, pushing the door open.

I looked at his swollen face. He looked at the stain covering the front of my jeans. “What is it with you and your bladder?” he asked.

I had no desire to explain. “How’re your ribs?”

“I don’t know. My head hurts so bad that it won’t allow me to think about my ribs.”

“Did you get to read any of the letters?” He shook his head. “Here you go,” I said, gently slipping it from the pocket.

Travis smiled, which caused him to wince. He sat down on the back steps, blew gently into the envelope, and removed a single page of stationery, folded twice and, like the envelope, yellowing at the edges. He looked at it for a minute in the dim light of the kitchen. He began to read.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was the last week of football season and we were working overtime getting ready for the game against our big rival, the Mingo Indians, who were quarterbacked by my cousin, Duke Ducheski. With eleven seconds to go in the game, I reached the pinnacle of my high school athletic career when I intercepted a deflected pass in the end zone. We beat Mingo 14–13 and captured the first Big Valley Athletic Conference football championship since the days of Alex Harmon. Here’s something I’ve never before admitted: I was totally out of my position, and that interception was nothing but dumb luck. Doesn’t matter. I was the hero. After the game, I shook hands with Duke and he had tears in his eyes, and I felt bad for him . . . but only for a second.

The Blue Devil Touchdown Club had a victory parade through town and a celebration in the high school gymnasium. It was great fun, and early the following morning Travis was back at the house. “Okay, hero, time to get back to work on Project Amanda,” he said.

He had healed quickly from his encounter with Big Frank. The cut over his ear had mended, and he could once again breathe without pain.

“All and all, that night wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Travis explained. “When that light flipped on, I figured it was all over. I was sure he was going to kill me. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I really thought he was going to kill me. When he said, ‘Find anything interesting, boy?’ I swear, Mitch, I believed it was the end of my life.”

“I wouldn’t have let him kill you.”

He grinned. “What were you going to do, run out and piss on him?”

“Kiss my ass, Travis. I couldn’t see in there.”

“If I could have gotten past him and out the door, I would have kept running and never come back.”

I raised one brow toward him. “And where, exactly, would you have gone?”

“I probably couldn’t have made it in one night, but I was thinking of Asheville, North Carolina.”

I smiled. “Really. That’s interesting.” Travis hadn’t mentioned his grandfather, or the man we believed to be his grandfather, since the day he had made the aborted call. “So, you’re thinking that Ronald E. Virdon might actually be your grandfather?”

“I’m thinking he is, yeah.”

I laughed. “You should have just asked him when you had him on the phone.”

“Hell, with the way my luck has been running, he’d probably get so excited he’d have a heart attack. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen when I see him.”

“See him? When are you going to see him?”

“As soon as you can get the car. I’m thinking next weekend, before wrestling season starts.”

On Monday, Travis came over for dinner and I called for an executive committee meeting of the Malone family. Mom came in from the kitchen, where she was cleaning up from dinner. Dad was in his recliner, smoke from his pipe swirling up over the sports pages of the Steubenville
Herald-Star
and filling the room with the faint aroma of cherries. I had decided to take the direct approach. I had given this a lot of thought. I was a teenager, and there were certain things that I would try to slip past my parents. However, a weekend road trip to North Carolina was not on that list. Either I did this with their blessing, or I didn’t do it. Neither of my parents held Frank Baron in high esteem, and I hoped this would play in my favor. We would tell them about Project Amanda—to a point—and hope that they would allow us to complete the mission. Frankly, I was harboring major doubts. Travis was hoping to play upon my mother’s soft heart, which could work. Trying to slide one past my dad, however, was an entirely different issue.

There was no school on Friday because of a teachers’ workshop. I had the weekend off before basketball practice began on Monday. That gave us three full days, which was all we needed. We planned to drive to Asheville on Friday, meet with his grandfather on Saturday, and drive back Sunday. I was hoping that my newly found status as football legend for the interception in the Mingo game would give me an edge in the negotiations. “I need a favor,” I told my parents. “Actually, we need a favor. There’s no use in pussyfooting around, because it’s all going to come back to the fact that we need a favor. A big one.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. “What is it?” Mom asked.

Travis interjected. “Mrs. Malone, do you remember about three years ago, Mitchell and I were sitting out on the porch, and I asked you if you knew how my mother had died?”

Mom nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, since then, Mitchell and I have been conducting our own investigation. I asked Mitchell to help me because I wanted to know about my mom. So we started Project Amanda.” My dad’s brows arched. “We’ve done a pretty good job, actually. We gathered up old newspaper stories, police reports, interviewed people, stuff like that.”

“But why?” Mom asked.

“Because I wanted to know about my mom, Mrs. Malone. Before we started, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know what she looked like. Imagine if the only thing you knew about your mother was what you overheard people whispering about her. Big Frank would never tell me anything, and I really wanted to know. So, to make a real long story short, I snooped around and found out that I have a grandfather—Mom’s dad.”

Travis stated this as fact, even though we didn’t know for sure that Ronald E. Virdon was his grandfather. Any doubt about this “fact” would have prompted my parents to immediately nix the plan.

“Where does your grandfather live?” Dad asked.

“Asheville, North Carolina,” Travis said, as though it were just two miles down the road.

“Are you planning to go there?” Mom asked.

“I was hoping I could drive us there,” I said.

My dad put his paper on his lap and removed the pipe from his mouth. He and Mom looked at each other without speaking. “I don’t know about that,” Dad said. This wasn’t a defeat. My father never agreed to anything right out of the blocks. If he said no, he could always change his mind. If he said yes, he was stuck with his decision.

We both sat in silence for several moments, until Travis said, “I know this is a lot to ask, because there’s nothing in it for you. I know you’re taking all the risk. But I really need your help. Short of hitchhiking, I can’t get there. You guys do a lot to make me feel a part of your family, and I really appreciate that. But I’m not a part of your family. All I have is Big Frank, and you know what that’s like. This might be the only other family I have. I don’t want to wait any longer. I’ve waited my whole life, and I just don’t want to wait . . .” Travis was choking up and couldn’t complete the thought.

My mom, too, was tearing up.

Dad turned to me. “Do you think you’re responsible enough to handle this?”

“Yes, sir. There’s no school Friday. We could leave early Friday morning. Visit with his grandfather on Saturday, and drive back Sunday. And we’ve got money. I’ve got a hundred dollars I’ve been saving. Travis has . . .” I looked at him.

“Eighty-eight dollars.”

“So we can cover our own expenses,” I added.

“What about your dad, Travis?”

“He’s going to be out of town or with his girlfriend. He never knows where I am most of the time, anyway.”

Dad took out his pocketknife and started cleaning the bowl of his pipe. “I’ll talk to your mother about it and let you know.”

We left Brilliant at six a.m. Friday. It was still dark and spitting snow in the Ohio River Valley, which made my mother even more nervous than usual. We had washed the car—a 1968 Buick Wildcat—and Dad had added an oil change and a tank of gas. In the backseat was a cooler that my mother had packed. It contained enough food to sustain a division of Green Berets for a week. Dad gave me a credit card for an emergency. We were ready to roll.

“Call collect as soon as you get there,” Mom said just once more as we pulled away from the curb. We were on a mission to locate Travis’s grandfather, and it was the greatest adventure of our young lives. The radio was cranked and so were we, as we turned off Third Street and headed south on Ohio Route 7, which we would follow along the Ohio River to Marietta. The highway had been cut out of the eastern Ohio hills, and staggering cliffs climbed from the berm of the road. The last orange and yellow leaves stubbornly clung to the trees that covered the tops of the hills and the lowland plains between the highway and the river.

From Marietta we cut across to Charleston, West Virginia. As we cruised past the West Virginia capital, Travis pulled out a notebook and began scribbling notes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to figure out what I’m going to say to him.”

“You have to write it down? How about, ‘Hi, I’m your grandson, Travis’?”

“I’m writing down other things. I’ve never talked to the guy. I want to be able to tell him everything I’ve been doing for the past seventeen years.”

“I see. Here’s one. Tell him about the time in the sixth grade when you stuffed the sanitary napkin up the milk machine, and Miss Peniwinkle got an extra surprise with her milk purchase.”