Sons of the 613 (23 page)

I run through the trees, still laughing. The rain feels wonderful. I squash and stumble across the marshy area, falling into puddles, tripping over unseen roots, the grass slicing my hands. When I reach the trees I run as fast as I dare, bolts of lightning illuminating the path, and then I trip and fall again and try to get up, but this time something is different. Like someone has pulled a plug, all my energy and feral joy gone in an instant, nothing left but utter exhaustion. I lie there, the rainwater pooling around me.

Push myself to a sitting position, confused. Did I come from there? I'm shivering now, almost as bad as when I came out of the creek.

Up to my feet, reeling, panicked, wanting to run but surrounded by trunks and branches and vines and the whole forest pulling at me, weighing on me, the rain pouring down, lightning, thunder, the dragon writhing through the trees above my head. Stagger forward, moving just to move, bounce off the rough surface of an invisible tree, then another, move ahead, waving hands in front of me, my body hot and cold all at once. I don't remember where I am. Did I walk here? Is this the woods behind our house? It feels like it goes on forever in every direction, endless. I can see Tim's frightened expression, and Danny's face as he folded, bleeding, and see Lesley, and Josh, all of them talking at me at once, and Terri's dog barking and snapping at me. Are the other dogs following me? Is Nystrom? Did I really do that?

Wait. What happened?
I'm not walking anymore. I'm not moving forward, because now I'm on the ground again, the world twirling around me, my heart racing. I have to get up and keep going, but I can't. I think,
I'm going to die here like this.
And it doesn't bother me so much. Everyone is still talking to me all at once, now calling my name, not leaving me in peace.
Isaac,
Josh is saying.
Isaac.

Leave me alone,
I think.

Isaac,
he says, shouting it at me.
Leave me alone,
I say, and this time I think I say it out loud, but he won't leave me alone. He keeps shouting it, he won't just let me be.

“Leave me alone,” I say again. “Leave me alone.” Screaming it this time: “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

I keep repeating it with as much force as I can muster, over and over again, until my voice is cracking and hoarse, and it dwindles until all I have to offer is a harsh whisper to fend him off. “Leave me alone,” I rasp. “Leave me alone.”

Leave me alone.

Why can't you just leave me alone.

Then I'm flying, the wind scooping me up out of the mud and lifting me through the trees and high into the storm-tossed night. I kick and punch and thrash about, fighting against it, but it won't let me free. I'm buffeted between the clouds and the lightning and the dragon, and this is how I'll die, lost forever with no one knowing what happened to me, never finding my body.

Except it's not the wind, I see now, it's Josh, and I lash out at him. But he's immune to my violence, holding me tight as I flail and struggle until I'm too weak to fight anymore. He's carrying me now, carrying me through the rain and the forest and the darkness. Cradling me like a child. Murmuring to me in a quiet voice to calm me, a voice I've never heard before. Saying,
It's okay, Isaac. It's okay. Come on. Come on, little brother. Come with me. Let's go home.

“There's another piece over there. No, there, behind the toilet.”

I crouch down and spot the shard of glass on the tile floor and gingerly pick it up. Josh is perched on the bathroom counter next to the sink, the unit creaking ominously each time he shifts his weight. He's absently tossing and tumbling a large rock from hand to hand, the rock that I had launched through the window. The wrong window, it turns out: the bathroom, not his bedroom window, which is what I'd been aiming for.

There's a piece of cardboard duct-taped over the window. Josh is there in the room with me, but he's not there. His eyes follow me as I put the glass into the brown paper shopping bag with the rest of the pieces, but I'm not really entering his brain. If he's still upset over what I did, he hasn't shown it.

I guess I slept for a full day, feverish and delirious. I remember heading into the woods, I remember the dogs, I remember something about a dragon, but not much more after that. I have a very, very vague memory of Josh carrying me home, or something like that, but I had so many weird dreams I'm not sure what's real. I woke up this morning in my parents' bed around ten, my fever almost gone. Lisa was at school. I don't know about Patrick and Terri. Maybe still asleep. Josh was in the kitchen when I wandered in there.

“Hungry?” was all he said. I nodded, and he jerked his head toward the table. I sat while he cooked sausages and eggs and toast for both of us, and made coffee for himself. We ate together, Josh reading the paper. Not a word passed between us, our residual shared anger hardened into a taut silence. Or maybe not. Maybe a truce of some sort. Or maybe just exhaustion, like so much had happened that neither of us knew where to begin, like a massive tangled knot in a kite string that you just ignore because it's too complicated to even think about.

He didn't speak until I'd finished eating. Then he said, “Let's go clean up the bathroom.”

I don't complain about it as I pick up the glass, my hands in gardening gloves that are stiff from dried mud. It seems fair. I did break the window, after all. It's a wordless task marked and measured by the clinking of the glass shards as I place them into the doubled-up paper bag, and by the dry start-stop of Josh tossing and catching the rock.

I was stealing glances at him during breakfast, and I'm doing it again now, trying to detect any evidence of the two Joshes: the Josh I know, the one who very definitely picked me up and tossed me into the creek, and the other Josh, a Josh who may have headed into the woods, into the teeth of the storm, to search for me, and brought me home cradled in his arms. I don't see traces of either of them.

Am I angry at him about Lesley? I don't know. When I let my mind go in that direction I expect to encounter a huge store of emotion. But there's nothing. I don't know why I cared about her at all. I just know that I don't ever want to see her again.

The silence grows longer still, another presence in the room. I hold out a hand, Josh passes me the broom, and I start to sweep, and that uneven rhythm becomes the sound that indicates the passage of time.

Then, into the stillness, Josh says, “I threw a TV set through the downstairs picture window once.”

It's been so long since I've talked that I have to clear my throat before I can start: ahem
ahem.
“I remember.”

The first thing I've said to him all morning. The first thing I've said to him in days.

“You remember that? You were pretty young.”

I retrieve another jagged triangle from near the toilet and carry it to the bag. “Why'd you do it?” I ask.

Josh thinks about it, shakes his head. “Don't know. I was pissed off about something.” He makes a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle.

It's quiet again as I sweep. He wants to say more. I can feel it. I want to say more, too, all the questions I have piling up into a disordered, impatient line. It's a rare opportunity, right now, a chance to address everything, and I don't want to lose it. I will start with
How long was I out?
which will take me to
What happened?
and from there I will move to
Why did you have to do that with Lesley?
Or start at the top with
What are you doing
with your life?
and work from there. I visualize various strategic pathways, practicing them in my head, knowing that whenever I open a conversation with Josh it will most likely veer off in some chaotic direction.

I open my mouth to speak, and at the same time he says, “Isaac . . .” and then his phone rings. He looks at it. “I have to take this,” he says, hopping down from the countertop. “Hey, hold on,” he says into the phone, and pauses at the doorway. “Put the bag of glass in the garage with the recycling,” he says to me, “and make sure you mop.”

Then he leaves.

I fall asleep for most of the rest of the day and wake up around dinnertime, feeling woolly headed and grouchy, but not sick anymore. We all eat together, Josh distracted and withdrawn again. I feel strangely calm, but Josh is worse. Like he's pacing inside, moving restlessly from one end of some dark cage to the other, back, forth, not finding any ease.

When I first come in, Patrick says, “Yo, he's up! Dude, what the hell happened to you? You out there having some sort of vision quest?”

“None of your business,” says Josh, and Patrick drops it.

Terri has broken three of my mother's snuff bottles. She was examining them and dropped them and they shattered. Between her and Patrick, and Joey's incontinence, I think they've caused several thousand dollars in property damage over the past few days.

We're clearing the table when I hear a car pulling into the driveway and then the slamming of a car door. Then the doorbell rings. The dog starts yapping.

“Joey, shut up!” say Patrick and Terri in unison. Joey doesn't.

The bell rings again, the interval too short for polite doorbell etiquette. Josh is texting and ignores it. The rest of us exchange glances. Joey yaps more, until Patrick nails him with a meatball.

“Clean that up,” says Josh, still texting.

The bell rings a third time. Joey can't decide between yapping and eating the meatball.

“Someone gonna get that?” asks Terri.

“Isaac, get the door,” says Josh.

I have to pass by him to exit the kitchen. He's focused on his texting, and I slow just enough to be able to do a flyby read of the screen. He's writing,
If I do it, will you show up?

Do what,
I wonder,
And who is he talking to?

On the way to the front entrance I can see out the picture windows in the living room. There's a massive Chevrolet Suburban filling up our driveway, parked crooked, the sort of car that makes my parents say,
There
ought to be a law.

When I get to the front door the Suburban makes sense. There's a man standing there who could only drive that sort of car: he's big with a gut, and he's got buzzed hair with a flattop, a scowly, craggy face, and overall he looks about as unpleasant as they make human beings.

“Is this the Kaplan residence?” he says the instant I open the door.

I blink at him. “Yes.”

“Your daddy home?”

He's clipped and unsmiling.

“Um . . . can I ask what this is in regards to?”

That's what my mom says when people we don't know call or come to the door. It doesn't have the effect I'm hoping for. Instead the man seems annoyed.

“Just get your daddy, please.”

We've never used Mommy/Daddy in this house, and the way he says it irks me, like I'm his kid to order around. Then before I do anything his eye line shifts upward and his expression changes slightly, like he's surprised and trying to hide it and recalculating the situation.

“Can I help you?” says Josh from behind me.

“Your daddy home?” says the man again, for some reason trying the same tone with Josh—which, well, mistake.

“Isaac, go away,” Josh says, and sort of shovels me behind him with one big hand. I take a few steps back but linger.

“My ‘daddy'?” says Josh, flat.

“Yes. Is he home? I'd like to speak with him.”

“Who are you?”

“That's not your concern. Can I speak with—”

“It is my concern, seeing as how you're standing at my front door.”

“Well, seeing as how you probably don't own the house, it's not your front door—it's your daddy's. Can you get him, please?”

“He's not here. Who are you?”

“Name's Tim Phillips.”

Oh. No.

Josh shrugs. “Great. Who are you.”

“
Tim
Phillips.
Senior. Tim Junior is my son. I take it you're the idiot who hit him?”

Of course. Of course. Tim Junior finally spilled the beans, overcame his fear of Josh and told his dad everything, and now he's here and it's all catching up to Josh, and he's in huge trouble.

“Oh,” says Josh, nodding. If Josh thinks he's in huge trouble, he's not showing it. “Tim Junior. I get it now. No wonder he's such a shit.”

My jaw drops open. Tim Senior's face reddens. It literally turns red. His hands drop off his hips. Josh stares back at him, absolutely calm.

“What did you just say?” manages Tim Senior finally.

“I said,” says Josh, exaggerating his enunciation, each word a separate entity, “your son is a
shit.
And now that I see you, I understand why, because you look like a shit too.”

I don't know why I didn't expect this. I should have. From Tim Senior's expression I'm guessing that he didn't expect this either.

Long moment of the two of them looking at each other. More recalculating and temper management from Tim Senior, who is somehow nodding and shaking his head at the same time, like he's trying to draw figure eights with his nose. Then he says, “You got a mouth on you, don't you.”

Josh doesn't respond, just returns his gaze, arms crossed.

“You're real brave, aren't you, beating up on some little kid,” says Tim Senior, trying to regain the high ground.

“Your shit of a kid is real brave, ganging up on my little brother with all his shit friends.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You teach him to do that? I bet you did. You know something? I never once ganged up on anybody or got in a fight with anybody who didn't want to fight. Ever. But you, I can tell, you're just a shit bully, like your shit kid.”