Ravens (25 page)

“Shaw. All these people outside. All these…
people
.”

“Yes.”

“They keep coming.”

“Yeah. Too many now. We gotta move tomorrow. Going to some kind of fairgrounds.”

“And I understand you’ve had a few emails?”

He dipped his head. Amiable beleaguerment. “A few.”

“How many?”

“Um. Thousands.”

“Thousands?”

“Yeah.”

“Shaw, what do they want?”

“Well. I guess they want to think there’s some meaning to all this.”

“To what?”

“To life.”

Her smile was impeccably composed. She was a planet in a perfectly elliptical orbit, with the cameras gliding like moons behind
her. It was a spellbinding show. “And they’re coming to you. Why? Because of your luck? Because of your money?”

“Because of the Lord.”

“You think the Lord is calling you?”

“I think the Lord’s calling everyone. Maybe we don’t want to hear Him. Too busy thinking about money. All this mortgage stuff
and market stuff, we can’t hear nothin’. But sooner or later, He’s gonna get through.”

She turned to Tara. “Tara, when your father told you that your family would have to split the jackpot, what was your first
thought?”

Tara considered. “Well. I guess, I guess for a second I was thinking, Daddy, do we
have
to? Does this guy even have to
know
?”

One of the cameras sneaked over to take in Shaw shaking his head and laughing.

Then Tara said, “But then… I got to know him …”

She sent him a quick glance — misty-eyed, with a note of yearning. He knew she was doing it for the cameras, for the sake
of the people she loved — but still, wasn’t it a little bit real? Her blush, that was real. And the look of contentment on
her mother’s face — he knew
that
was real. Patsy was pleased to put her life in his hands. And Jase belonged to him, he was certain of that. Even Mitch seemed
almost at ease now. And the pilgrims were out there waiting for him, with legions more ready to come. I’ve woven this whole
world out of pure faith. It’s a kind of magical tapestry of faith and love and power, and it’s come alive now —

Vibration in his pocket. Romeo was calling.

Diane Sawyer said, “Tara, when Shaw says he’s going to give away all his money… do you believe him?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think he’s a little crazy?”

Tara softly bit her lower lip. The camera closed on her.

“No. I think he’s beautiful.”

And Diane Sawyer was beaming. Beaming! She must be wondering, is this love? Has Tara fallen for Shaw? If this is love, it’s
the love story of the year! But again Shaw felt the trembling — the fucking phone. Romeo’s second call. Which meant some emergency,
which probably wasn’t anything at all — but still, he
had
to answer it.

Diane Sawyer was asking Tara about all the money, what the money would do to her family. The cameras left Shaw for a moment,
and he pulled the phone from his pocket and held it low and flipped it open. Romeo had sent him a text:

Mutiny. Tara & mitch. Emails. Going to cops. Plan to kill us.

He shut the phone, and looked up.

Tara was telling Diane Sawyer, “Well, the things that Shaw is talking about, I think they’re true. Money
should
be about what good you can do with it. If you keep it for yourself? You’ll be miserable. If you show love with it? You’ll
be happy. I think he’s right about that. You know, he keeps saying how much my father has taught him? But now he’s the one
teaching us.”

Her most dazzling smile.

Shaw wondered, How can she do it? How can she be so glib? Such a liar, such a heartfelt liar down to her bones! And her father
next to her! That weasely cunt of a man. Lying to the world. The hypocritical
liars
!

Diane Sawyer turned to him: “This family seems to like you, Mr. McBride.”

He gathered himself, and forced a grin. “Well, they’re sort of
my
family now. They have to like me.”

Everyone laughed.

But he was thinking: How do we make you suffer?

There’s been no dream in history but fuckers like you have torn it apart with your lies, treason, and selfishness. But this
time there’ll be a price. A price you’ll be paying for the rest of time, you cowardly shits. Who did you think you were dealing
with?

The moment the interview was over, he signaled the producer, who came over and detached him from the mike. He went to the
little bathroom next to Jase’s room and held down the number 7 on his cell phone.

Romeo answered. “Took you long enough.”

“Just tell me,” said Shaw.

Romeo read him the emails.

Shaw said, “Listen, I don’t have any privacy here. I’m in this cramped little shitbox. It’s like the shitbox in Wendell Redinski’s
trailer, you remember that? Like it’s made out of cardboard. But, God. My God she’s gonna suffer. Her whole family. They’ll
suffer like they didn’t believe such suffering was possible.”

“Shaw, we don’t have to —”

“Don’t tell me we don’t have to. You know we have to. We have to shove the suffering up their spines like electrical current.”

“Shaw —”

“I mean pity these fuckers.”

Patsy
got to talk to Diane Sawyer for a few minutes after the show, just one on one, chatting while the crew took what they called
B-roll footage. She asked Diane about her favorite charities, and Diane mentioned the Robin Hood Foundation. Patsy said she’d
like to make a little donation. Saying it so Diane would know she didn’t really mean
little.

She wished Shaw were here to see her. But he’d gone off somewhere.

She walked Diane out to her hired car: a somber black Lexus LS hybrid. The pilgrims lined the driveway and applauded, and
Diane was kind enough to stop for a moment and chat with them. A woman that Patsy detested, a Mrs. Riley, came up and started
flapping her jaw, making derogatory comments about Ellen DeGeneres, as though Diane wanted to hear that! As though Diane Sawyer
were as catty and mean-spirited and competitive as Mrs. Riley! Patsy told Mrs. Riley, “It’s too bad we’re in such a rush because
we’d love to talk.” Not harsh, not unpleasant, but
whap,
it did shut the woman up.

As Patsy and Diane walked on, Diane murmured, “Thank you.”

And they chuckled together and Patsy thought, maybe it’s true, what Shaw says about me: I
preside
.

She thought, there are qualities you can possess that those closest to you can’t really see. Even you yourself may be blind
to them. It takes someone with a fresh eye to discern them and bring them out and make you shine. God, I wish he were here.
Where is he, what in the world is he doing?

Romeo
bit down on his knuckles as he would an apple; then he rubbed the back of his bloody fist against his tears. Then he slammed
his foot into the gas pedal. Since the engine was shut off (he was parked on the outskirts of town, near the pulp mill, under
a lone streetlight that turned the pavement into snake-skin), nothing happened. He couldn’t cry out because he was on the
phone with Shaw. Shaw was telling him what he wanted done. Telling him step by step, and after each step waiting for Romeo
to say, “OK. I got it.”

Shaw suggested, “You want to write these things down?”

“No. I got it.”

“You remember what to say?”

“Yeah. There was a price. The price was posted.”

“You have to do it all, Romeo. I can’t do any of it.”

“OK.”

“You have to be merciless. I can’t because we need them to love me. They have to love me or all this goes to shit. You understand?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you’re upset. I know you don’t want to do this. But everything depends on you.”

“Yeah.”

They hung up.

It would have been OK to cry out, Romeo knew, there in that empty lot where no one would have heard. And he did
try
to cry out, but no sound emerged.

Burris
made a space amidst all the crap on the kitchen counter. He started writing a letter to make clear his position on things.

First he wrote
Dear Nell.
Then he canceled that. He started on a fresh page, and wrote
Dear Nell
again.

Then he wrote:

You do not want anything to do with me because you think I am an idiot. You are right. But as you probably know I have loved
you every minute of every day since our first date which transpired in Archies Restaraunt in Darien which was the most exiting
night of my life I think so even when I was married to Barbara. I guess you know and she probably too.

By now you may have heard about my meeting with your son Mitchel.

He stopped. Did Mitchel have two t’s?

He couldn’t look it up in the dictionary because it wasn’t a word.

Well, why not just say Mitch then? Just because this is a letter doesn’t mean it has to be so damn formal.

He stared at the page.

What
is
this?

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. What in God’s name is the point of writing this?

Well, to be fair, what was the point of any of the dumb things I’ve done for that woman?

For example, that night forty years ago, a few months after the breakup, when he’d appeared under Nell’s window, sobbing and
begging her to give him another chance. She’d been gracious in her refusal — but not
too
gracious. It wasn’t oh-my-love-come-into-my-arms. It was more like, I’m-flattered-but-get-over-it. Or that day twenty years
ago, after her son Mitch had wheedled her into joining the church, and Burris had run into her in the supermarket and she’d
told him frankly that Faith Renewal felt more like a seniors’ bingo room than a church; whereupon he’d confessed that he attended
only because Barbara made him attend — and they’d laughed all the way to the checkout counter, and after that he hadn’t slept
for a year. That was the year he’d screwed up on the Coastal Area Drug Abuse Task Force with his overeagerness, charging that
city commissioner’s kid with dealing crack and then being unable to quite prove it, getting demoted. But that was also the
year he’d felt most completely alive, because he’d carried inside him that memory of Nell in the supermarket, laughing at
his little jokes. But then, at the Jaycees’ barbecue, he’d acted maybe a little too affectionate and she’d cut him short.
Also there was the day when he had come to talk to her students through the Community Policing program, and afterward she’d
told him what a triumph it had been. And over the years there had been several more chance meetings at the Winn-Dixie and
the Heart Drive picnic and Trudy’s Café; plus the occasions (about seven hundred of them) when he’d seen her car go past his
stakeouts; and several phone calls when he’d invited her to one event or another (she’d always declined); and three times
at the July 4th fireworks on St. Simon’s; and Barbara’s funeral. And the whole time, throughout the whole forty years, day
in and day out and even in his sleep, he’d been nursing this hopelessness in his head. The merciful thing about being an idiot
is that you’re too dumb to know what an idiot you are. But suppose you get a bit smarter for just a second and the whole picture
comes to you, almost like in a vision, like now. A whole lifetime’s worth of boneheadedness crashing down like a shelf full
of shoes, all around your head at once: isn’t that too humiliating to bear? How could you possibly survive such pain? Also
why would you want to?

Clio
was hanging out in her room, listening to Bat for Lashes and staring at the wall, when she got a call from that bizarre little
dude she’d met at the tattoo parlor — that guy Romeo, the manager for Drive Fast & Shut Your Eyes.

He told her he’d found this guy up in Darien who did body suspensions. “You want to go see how he does it?”

“OK.” She tried to sound ambivalent but actually she was happy to get out of the house.

“I already called him,” said Romeo. “I’ll come get you.”

He picked her up and they went north on 17. His music was loud and razory, but she was OK with it. She was happy just to ride.
A few miles north of town, they passed that old rice plantation. It was so hot today that steam seemed to be rising from the
fields. An egret or some such bird was standing there on one leg, not moving, just standing there in the warp of heat.

Then Romeo did lower the volume, and said, “I can’t believe they did that. Did your family do that?”

“Do what?”

“Own slaves.”

She shrugged. “Oh. I guess. My great-great-grandfather or something. He was like a Confederate major.”

Romeo was thoughtful. “But he wasn’t a bad guy, right? I mean, I guess his buddies were telling him, like don’t worry about
it, owning slaves is cool. People believe anything their buddies tell them. That’s how you become a soldier. You say, these
are my buddies, I love them, I trust them. Then you can kill left and right and turn into a fucking troll of death if you
have to, and do it happily because it’s for your buddies. But it’s really all about love. Right? Jesus this fucking planet.
How did my soul happen to get assigned to
this
planet? I’m sorry. I’m ranting.”

“No, that’s OK.”

He
was
ranting, but Clio didn’t mind that.

She asked him, “The suspension, will it hurt?”

“I guess,” he said.

“So why should I do it?”

“Maybe it’ll make you feel free.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. But vulnerable too. So you gotta be careful.”

They drove past the Humane Society and came to the old auto shop where Arroyo lived. Squarish spectacles, soft lumpy shoulders.
He led them to his backyard, which was cloistered by an old aluminum fence, and showed off his ‘apparatus’: just a chain hoist
hung from an oak limb, but he was proud of it. He talked about dynamic rigging and ‘ eight-gauge vs. six-gauge’ and ‘Suicide
vs. Superman’ till Clio couldn’t take another word. She had an itch she was crazy to scratch but it was beneath her skin —
and this jackass was going on about inside-out eyebolting?