Son of Destruction (35 page)

At MIT he was a new person. Dean’s list, all that. Easy among people as smart as he was, and there were many. Then Wade phoned. His baby brother took on like Pop was on his deathbed, which wasn’t exactly true. Wade’s ‘emergency’ put Walker right back where he started, in the Pierce Point Garage, finishing the job Pop was doing the day he went belly up in the grease pit.

Lucy came in on his first morning. ‘How soon can you have it back?’ Shredded jeans on her, tie-dyed T-shirt, which was big that year, she was dressed just like everybody else but not. Diamond studs in her ears – her dead mother’s, he learned later; that nice-girl hair held back by prescription sun glasses – how does Walker know? There’s not much Walker doesn’t know. She apologized, the way you would to any man who was doing a job for you, ‘It’s my grandmother’s. She always expects things back yesterday.’

It was graduation week. Turned out this was Wade’s big emergency. He couldn’t deal with Pop because it was Senior Week; he was too busy out at the beach, carousing. Walker said, ‘When do you need it?’

She gave him a nice, indifferent smile. ‘Um, tonight? I’m going to the beach and she won’t let me out of the house until she gets her car back.’

‘Right,’ he said. He did not say: senior houseparties – not Walker in his old man’s coverall, with his hands filthy and his face thick with sludge. Not Walker, who knew as well as anyone what houseparties were, but had never been to one. Not Walker, looking the way he did. Pop was replacing a cracked block when he took queer and Wade rushed him to the E.R.; he had to finish the job.

There was no way she could know who Walker Pike really was. Not that day. ‘If you could do it by six . . .’

Why was she so anxious? You’d think it was her first beach party. He pretended to mull the estimate. In fact, he was taking her in – not the face, not even the body. He was absorbing the truth of her: the intelligence. The touching vulnerability. ‘Six o’clock, no problem. Ride you home?’

‘No thanks.’ She gestured to the road outside. Walker saw that redheaded Chaplin kid out front, idling in his father’s car: brainy Bob Chaplin, he noted. Safe as houses. Apologetic smile. ‘I have a ride.’

Walker drove to the beach that night anyway. In case.

Houseparties, what was he expecting? He wasn’t sure, but he knew what happened to Jessie after one of those things; it ate at him. He pulled her out, but too late. His heart told him to watch out for this one. No. He had to see her. He had to let her see him when he looked like himself, not like a greasy swamp bunny in Pop’s big old coverall. He would never walk into a private party even with an invitation, but everything opened up on the last night of Senior Week. The parties merged for the big bonfire on the beach. All creation would be down there on the sand, partying. Walker hated himself for knowing those things about matters he had moved beyond and could care less about, but he had to go.

On Huntington beach in a crowd that size Walker could lurk without having to explain himself; he could take all the time he needed to scope out Lucy Carteret and watch her from a distance; he would lay back until it seemed like the time was right. Then he’d invent a reason to speak to her. She probably wouldn’t recognize him right away, all cleaned up and looking fine. When he reminded her who he was she’d be surprised. She’d thank him for getting that grandmother’s car fixed in time. Then he could ask where she was going to college in September and the conversation would start. She’d have to ask him where he went. Then he could tell her he went to MIT, which even people down here admitted might be as good as Duke.

Driving out to Huntington beach that night Walker wrote dialog in his head. It’s where all his best conversations take place.

The party wasn’t hard to locate. From the causeway he could see the bonfire staining the night sky. He turned off on beach road and left his car on a side street. He walked the half-block to the path over the dunes where high school seniors and hangers-on chattered like monkeys, going back and forth from the beach. There were too many; they might ask who he was, or what he was doing here if he ran into them, so he stopped short of the path and started up through sawgrass and sandspurs, climbing the steepest part of the dune. When he reached the top, the spectacle stopped him cold.

The party sprawled on the beach below.

He couldn’t make himself go down. There was Walker Pike, all cleaned up tonight and looking pretty good in his white linen shirt and faded cutoffs, with his sandy hair washed until it shone, combed wet and pulled into a pony tail, in preparation. Why could he not go down there on the sand like a normal person, walk into that crowd and find the girl?

In Cambridge, Walker had no problem going out and showing himself to the people. In Massachusetts, it was easy. He was lean and handsome and good at what he did. Reclusive as he was in high school, he had changed. MIT turned him into a good talker – better company, he supposes. They got what he was saying. All those smart people with no crippling preconceptions. In that world, Fort Jude dichotomies did not pertain.

Now he was back home, poised at the crest where he could study the people on the sand. He stood there for a long time, scanning the crowd, looking for Lucy Carteret until his feet went to sleep and his muscles twitched as the sand shifted under him. A term on the Dean’s List, headed there again this spring, work-study job in Computer Science, the chairman wanted him to go on for an advanced degree, and he was still reluctant to go down there on the beach. The hard-packed sand was swarming with the cream of Fort Jude society, a distinction he hated as much as he hated this town. He couldn’t bring himself to penetrate that mob of heedless drunks and acid heads who knew Walker Pike as Pierce Point trash, if they knew him at all.

Bad idea, Pike. This was a bad idea. He turned to go.

He would have, too, but the angry snarl of a motor filled the street below. Walker wheeled to see what it was. Then he jumped aside as a Jeep rolled over the curb, aimed up the path through the dunes. Howling, the driver came on, and to hell with anybody who happened to be coming up from the beach. To hell with everybody, they could get the fuck out of his way. Near the top the Jeep foundered, wheels spinning. When he recognized Bellinger’s Wrangler, Walker’s heart seized up, and that was before he saw who was at the wheel. The car wasn’t the only thing he recognized. Memory told him where this would end. Rehearsing the future in a spasm of nausea, he saw it all. Hulking Brad Kalen was behind the wheel, filthy-drunk and fueled by rage, hollering at the others to get out and push the fucker, get moving you sniveling assholes, I smell pussy down there.

If Walker thought Lucy would be safe tonight, he was a fool. Like an obedient footman, Bob Chaplin – the kid he thought was Lucy’s protector tonight – jumped out of the Jeep like an obedient lackey and put his shoulder to the car, along with the others. Walker should have acted then; he should have yanked Kalen out of the Jeep and throttled him on the spot. He should have shaken him until his ears bled but before he could shout, the Wrangler belched and started moving. Chaplin jumped in with the others as it pitched over the crest and headed downhill, hurtling out of Walker’s reach.

The despicable bastard Walker had to pry off of Jessie Vukovich that time went roaring down on the crowd with sand flying and music blaring out of the speakers and his main men screaming as he aimed for the heart of the party.

The Jeep breached the crowd and everybody scattered. Walker started to run. As he did, he spotted the girl he knew he was in love with dancing with her lacy shirttail flying out from her long body, white lace skimming the white bikini. Lucy let go of some boy’s hand and spun out, laughing. Oblivious. She was oblivious. Walker saw that his beautiful, stupid girl was stoned out of her mind, loose-limbed and weaving in front of the fire with her arms flying and her mouth open to the skies. Then he saw her whirl at the sound of her name and he saw her wave, laughing. Like a fool she trotted over to the Jeep, flattered and ignorant. He saw Kalen laughing and waving.

He shouted, but he was too far away. He ran, but it was too late.

Walker died. He saw the future, and it was vile. The night he pulled Kalen off Jessie Vukovich, Jessie sobbed all the way home. Dripping bloody snot, she explained, ‘You only get in because there are others in the car. You think you’re safe.’

Crafty in the way of stupid people who know how to get what they want, Brad Kalen used his buddies like inflatable state troopers when he went stalking, propping them in place before he made his move to signify that this would be a safe ride. Then – how many times has this happened? He knew how to lose his buddies along the way; either he was too selfish for a gang rape or they weren’t the type; Walker didn’t know, any more than he knows what binds them to him. He did know where the bastard would take her to do it because they had both been there before. Walker was pounding back over the dune, running for his truck before Kalen and his cohort left off grinning for Bethy Bellinger’s camera like rock stars and helped Lucy into the Jeep. Walker knew, if not to the minute, how long all this would take and he would damn well get to Land’s End before Kalen did.

This time, he wouldn’t fuck up. He would be there in time to stop it.

Which Walker did, springing on Kalen before he could get that flimsy shirt off Lucy although, God, he had already hauled off and split her lip with his fist. Even tonight, Walker doesn’t know why he didn’t shout or throw something or figure out how to warn the girl before it came down. He should have plowed into Kalen the minute he nosed that Jeep into Lands End Road and stopped. Maybe it was Pierce Point wariness – cops would assume he was the offender – or maybe he was waiting for the son of a bitch to convict himself.
You fool
. Either way he still grieves over the pain his waiting caused her. Whatever ate Walker up evaporated when Kalen pushed her down and started pounding; Walker was on top of him, snarling and dragging him off before Lucy understood what was happening to her.

‘What are you doing,’ she cried, and Walker didn’t know whether she was talking to him or her assailant. ‘What are you
doing
!’

He dragged Kalen’s bloody hand out of her tiny white bikini pants and beat the living shit out of him, noting with satisfaction that there was no way they could get false teeth into that blunt, brute face of his in time for him to make that big smile for the graduation-day group photograph. He kicked Kalen over onto his face and left him in the sand.
Too rough, Walker
, he realized when he saw how the girl looked at him, shrinking, terrified and sobbing.

‘Oh, please,’ he cried, holding his hands out to her like a plaster St Francis.

‘Oh,’ Lucy sobbed, covering her mouth.

‘I had to.’

She looked into her hands and saw blood. ‘Oh, oh!’

‘I had to stop him.’

Her wild face was just now coming back together and she did not back away. Lucy came back into herself in stages – aware and thinking. When she could speak she acknowledged this in a voice so low that he had to guess at the tone, ‘You had to stop him.’ Then everything lifted. ‘You did!’

Then, with Kalen laid out in the mangroves like an eviscerated shark, Walker hugged her close, crying, ‘I’m sorry, I am so goddamn sorry,’ because he was afraid that he had in fact fucked up, just not in the same way as with Jessie Vukovich. Then Lucy bowed her head and leaned into him, so he could feel her lips moving on his chest and he felt the warmth of her mingled blood and wet breath through his shirt as she said loud enough so that there would be no question, ‘I’m sorry too.’ He wouldn’t kiss her – that torn lip – but he wrapped her in his shirt and took her home, riding along with the extraordinary sense that his life was about to change. It was, just not the way either of them in their wildest feat of clairvoyance or naked intelligence could possibly imagine.

Yes he was in love with her. He knows she was in love with him too, which is why he tried so hard with the old lady and how his heart broke afterward.

The next day she was gone. ‘Up north,’ he was told by the smug old woman when he went to ask for Lucy at her house. Mrs Archambault filled the doorway with her tidy permanent wave and perfect choker pearls and fixed glare.
Why are you here?

‘She’s on a trip,’ she told him in that cold, flat tone she kept for people who came to cut her grass or repair broken windows. That sneer:
Yard men.

‘I need to see her.’ He meant,
I need her.

Then she looked at him and said, in a voice that tore him in half and made tears choke Walker Pike, who never cries, ‘Did you do that to her? Did you?’

‘No,’ he shouted. He was still shouting when she slammed the door on him. ‘Dear God, no!’

Like she would believe anything he said.

Well, fuck her. They were both home over Labor Day Weekend, Lucy with all her bruises healed and only a small white scar on the lip because while Walker struggled with Kalen, the bulky drunk struck out and clipped his captive again with the back of his hand, tearing it with his ring. Now she was home.

His brother Wade was the social one so he knew who was in town, and when. Walker phoned the house. She muttered, afraid of being overheard. Colluding. His heart sank. The grandmother would never approve of him. That night Lucy came out to meet him on the waterfront across the street from the Fort Jude Club. The old woman thought she was inside, at the big party. They rode out to Land’s End; it was something they had to do.

They parked near the spot. They got out. They had to, given her pain and his determination to save her again and again. Without discussing it, they walked out on the strand where the mangroves were thick, studying the sand until they found the place. They didn’t do anything; they just stood, looking. For a long time they were silent. Then she turned and started back to the car.

He touched her cheek. It was one of those things.

Immediate and sure. No transaction needed. It fell into his hands like a gift.

They loved each other: she loved him. She was starting Radcliffe. Perfect.