In Honor (4 page)

Rusty yanked at something, and the rumble of the engine jumped noticeably louder. He stood back and nodded to himself, then seemed to remember I was standing there. “Carburetor needed more air. No point driving around in a muscle car when it doesn’t sound like one.”

I looked at the ground, silent, and kicked a piece of gravel with the toe of my boot. “Right.” I leaned back on the side of the car, and he shut the hood and ambled over next to me after grabbing up his bottle again.

“You goin’ somewhere?” He nodded to the cab, where a creased map sat on the bench seat, and now I was sure he’d flunked out. He didn’t even realize it was time for school to be starting up. Good. No need for me to mention it.

I blew a wisp of hair off my forehead. “Just getting out of town for a little while.”

He nodded, then stifled a burp. “You got family elsewhere?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?” I shook my head but didn’t look at him. He took another drink, then leaned in too close. “Where you going then, H?”

“Nowhere.” I pushed off the car and walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and rearranged my stuff. There was no way I was actually gonna say it out loud to Rusty. It’d be an open invitation for him to make fun of me. Even in my own mind, it still sounded ridiculous. Going to Kyra Kelley’s last concert to tell her about my dead brother? Because he sent me tickets? Not the thing I wanted to share with anyone, especially Rusty. But it was something to hold close to me, a goal for the moment in the middle of the hazy emptiness all around. A plan.

When our parents died, Finn was five years old. Even then, he’d figured out a way to deal with it. Gina said that from that moment on, he never stopped moving or playing or planning. He was always busy with something, and he kept me busy too, like if we both always had something to do, we wouldn’t ever have to be sad. And he continued with it, always. He focused on concrete things he could accomplish. In high school it was grades and football and his car. It was why the Impala was in mint condition. He’d worked on it every day since he got it, telling me about all the places it’d take us one day. And I’d sat inside, breathing in the smell of old vinyl and thinking how I’d never want to go anywhere without him. Now here I was again, in the cab of the car, thinking the same thing, but about to do it anyway.

Rusty ducked his head into the cab on the driver’s side and turned the engine off. Then he slid in behind the wheel and looked at me with quickly sobering eyes. “Where you goin’?”

I tucked my map beneath the seat and rolled up the
Us Weekly
. “It wouldn’t make sense to you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Not much that does these days. Try me.”

I sat down, eyes on the dash. Maybe he’d leave if I told him. Or maybe he’d somehow understand and think it was a great idea. I looked right at him, drunk and disheveled, and mustered what confidence I could. “I’m going to California to see Kyra Kelley’s last concert.” It sounded infinitely more ridiculous than I’d anticipated. I waited. He looked me over, bemused, and for a second I thought maybe he was too wasted to realize the idiocy of what I’d just said. I fumbled, trying to make it make sense to him. “To tell her about Finn. He sent me these tickets. And then he asked me to tell her about him.”

He nodded reverently, and for a second I thought in some tiny way he got it. Then he leaned over, put his hands on my cheeks, and smooshed them together. “That . . . is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I smacked at his hands, and he let go and leaned back against the seat, laughing.

I hated him. I hated him for the way he showed up yesterday, for showing up here today, for being a mess and making fun of me, and for not being Finn when I needed him most. My brother was everything he wasn’t. There’d been plenty of times I’d wondered how they were friends, because they were so different, and now I didn’t care.

“Get out, Rusty.” I shoved him, and he almost toppled out the door, which made him laugh even harder. I crossed my arms over my chest, willing myself not to cry in front of him.

He sucked in a deep breath and tried to get ahold of himself, I could tell, but I refused to look over at him. Finally, he put a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry, H, I’m sorry. That just sounds like—”

“I know what it sounds like. All right? I know. But I don’t know what else to do right now, and Lilah just left for school, and Gina’s telling me I have to move on, and he wrote me this letter and sent me these tickets. And the last thing he said to me was to tell Kyra Kelley about him. That was the last thing he asked me to do.” Tears came now, but I didn’t care. I was already humiliated. “So I’m gonna go to her concert and do that. And yes, I realize how stupid it sounds, okay? But you don’t get to have an opinion about it.”

I got out and heaved the passenger door shut, then wiped my eyes and walked around to the driver’s side, where he sat, finger tapping the steering wheel, stunned-quiet. “So get out. I need to get on the road.” He didn’t move. “Rusty, come on.”

He waved me off. “All right, all right.” But he didn’t get out. Instead, he shoved my stuff onto the floorboard and scooted over to the passenger side. “I’m going too, then.”

“Like hell you are.”

He stretched out his legs in front of him. “Yep. Finn wouldn’ta wanted you going off by yourself like this.” He patted the dash. “What if the car breaks down? Or you get lost?” I didn’t move, and I didn’t say anything. He leaned his head back. “What’re you waitin’ for, H? Let’s go see what’sher-name. I’ll just take a little rest here while you drive.” He patted the seat, then grinned up at me with half-closed eyes before his chin fell to his chest and he was out.

I wasn’t getting him out of the car. I thought for a second about driving to his house and rolling him out onto his front yard, but I didn’t hate him enough to leave him like that to deal with his dad. And what if the car
did
break down or I
did
get lost? What then? I glanced down at him in the passenger seat, where he’d ridden alongside my brother for all of high school. Then I turned around and went in the house, to Finn’s room.

Inside, it was still and dark. I twisted open the blinds and stood by the window a moment, feeling almost like I was doing something wrong. Like it should all be left exactly as it was even though I’d been in there a handful of times in the nine months since he’d shipped out. He’d always kept it simple and neat. It didn’t make much of a statement about him. He saved the Impala for that. From the chrome on the wheels to the slick black paint that cost him a fortune, he poured himself into that car.
That
was where I’d gone to feel close to him when he left. Driving around in it had been a comfort, so maybe it was right that I was about to take it on a mission that made sense only to me.

What didn’t make sense was that I’d made up my mind, somewhere between the car and Finn’s room, that Rusty could go with me. And that he’d need some clothes, because he reeked of a night spent drinking and mourning. I’d been so angry with him outside, I hadn’t let myself think of how he must be feeling. Finn would have been destroyed if it’d been the other way around.

I went to his dresser and pulled out a few shirts and a pair of jeans. Outside of his uniform or practice clothes, Rusty’d always worn boots and long pants, even in the Texas summer heat. But since we were headed to California, I went ahead and grabbed a pair of Finn’s shorts and a pair of flip-flops for him, just in case. He could figure out for himself what to do about underwear.

Clothes in hand, I took one last look around the too-still room. Then I headed out to my brother’s car, where the open road, Kyra Kelley, and his drunk ex–best friend were waiting.

4

There was one thing I had to do first.

When I pulled into the lot of Reagan County Park, I was relieved to find it empty. Certain allowances usually seem to be made for grieving people, but this probably wouldn’t be one of them. I turned the car off and glanced over at Rusty, who was passed out, head back, mouth open, in the front seat. He didn’t flinch when I got out and slammed my door or when I went around to each of the back doors and rolled the windows all the way down so he didn’t stink up the car. After another look around to make sure no one was watching, I walked across the dewy grass to where the town emblem, the Santa Rita No. 1, stood proudly, cordoned off by thick, twisted ropes stiff with dirt and age.

The story of the blessed oil derrick was Finn’s favorite to listen to as a kid and our dad’s favorite to tell. Dad had a knack for weaving words together that made it seem just as exciting every time he told it. According to him, the Santa Rita No. 1 was Big Lake’s very own miracle. It was one of the first oil derricks built here, and after twenty-one long months of construction and several more of dry, hopeless prospecting, it didn’t look very promising.

But one spring day, a partner in the local oil venture climbed to the top of it with a single dried rose in his hand. His name was Frank Pickrell, and he’d received the rose from a group of Catholic women investors all the way in New York. With every oil-less day that passed, they’d gotten more and more nervous about their investment, so they decided to take matters into their own hands. They had a priest bless the rose in the name of Saint Rita, the patron saint of the impossible, and they’d instructed Pickrell to scatter its dried petals over the top of the oil derrick as a sort of christening. Pickrell was willing to try anything by then, so he did just what they said. He climbed to the top of the rig and let the crushed red petals swirl in the wind and flutter down over the greased iron and cracked ground. The very next day, the rig spouted her first gusher, spraying the countryside with shiny black hope and securing the town’s future in oil.

We didn’t grow up religious, and there weren’t many things Finn wasn’t confident about, but when he was up against one of them, he always came and grabbed a pinch of the Santa Rita’s dirt for good luck. If it was a game he needed it for, he’d smear it on the inside of his helmet. If there was a girl he wasn’t sure would say yes, he’d rub a few specks between his hands before he asked her out. And it never let him down. He believed in the patron saint of the impossible.

It was kind of a joke between the two of us, but this morning I figured if there ever was a time I needed her, it was now. I pulled Finn’s letter out of my purse and held the envelope open with one hand while I bent for a pinch of the blessed dirt with the other. Slowly, I rubbed my fingers together above the open envelope until the last tiny specks fell over the pages that contained his words and wishes.

Now I could go.

When I stood again, I felt a little glimmer of something in me. Hope, or confidence maybe, that I was doing the right thing. That I wasn’t completely crazy. That Finn would be proud and the impossible would become possible. I nodded a grateful thank-you to the Santa Rita and headed back to the car.

The engine rumbled when I laid my foot into the gas, and dry August air whipped through the open windows, blowing my hair into tangles all around me. Rusty slumped against the passenger door, snoring and down for the count, and I prayed he’d stay that way for a while. I needed to be alone with the road in front of me. And with Kyra Kelley, who was singing about wishing she’d never had to grow up. I understood, more so now than I had when I bought the album.

My whole life, I’d set my course by Finn, depending on him to guide me, like old sailors did with the stars. He’d been the one with the big ideas and the force of will to see them through, but now it was supposed to be me. Without him. The thought was foreign and hard to swallow. Even so, I told myself that the miles of desert and nothing towns stretched out in front of me were full with the possibility to do it. It didn’t matter that I only half believed it.

Rusty shifted in the seat and took in the deep, heavy breath of someone who was worlds away from consciousness. With him like that, I could almost pretend like it wasn’t a terrible idea to bring him along. He did, at one time, have his good points. Ever since I could remember, he’d been Finn’s most loyal and devoted friend. They were inseparable, despite that they were so different, and Rusty spent more time at our house growing up than his. Which I understood.

At his house, it was just him and his dad, who drank too much and blamed Rusty for the way his life had turned out. In his sober moments, which were few, he obsessed over Rusty’s football playing and was the proudest dad ever, convinced his boy was going to the pros. Inevitably, though, when game nights rolled around, he’d show up to the stands already primed up, and I’d hope the boys played well, especially Rusty, so his dad wouldn’t make a scene. Sometimes it was the other team or the coach or the refs that were the target, but most often it was Rusty—something he didn’t do well enough or fast enough or hard enough.

So he came to our house, where Gina would make us big dinners, fawn over the boys, and do her best to smooth it all over. They went out a lot too, especially by their senior year. After the game, they’d leave the house all showered up and smelling like Old Spice and mint gum, and roll off into the night in the Impala, leaving me behind wondering what went on out at the Pit or the field or whatever party spot they were headed to. I never got to go with them no matter how much I begged, but the following Monday at school, I’d always hear stories about the parties they’d been at. They
were
the party. Finn because of his friendly, contagious personality that could make you like him in five seconds flat, and Rusty because of his football bravado and ability to shotgun a beer faster than anyone around.