Theater Macabre (19 page)

Wesley laughed, a strained, painful sounding laugh. Then he dragged deeply on his cigarette, and when he exhaled, I could hear the tremor in his breathing. “Heterosexuality, huh?” He shook his head, a bitter smile on his face. “And what brought them to that conclusion?”

I shrugged. “Seems they found a letter. Didn’t mention your name, but it was addressed to you. Looked like it came from a woman who loves you very dearly. A woman named Phoenix. Your wife.”

All trace of humor left his face. “And how did they come by those suspicions?”

“Appleton, the postmaster. And Corman. I might have helped a little with background and testimony about your recent behavior.”

“I was never married. Did you tell them that?”

“No. I told them you’d falsified documents to stay here after the Handover. I guess they figure if you can lie about that, you can lie about anything. Including whether or not you were married.”

“Y
ou
know I wasn’t.”

“True.”

“But you didn’t tell them.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you said you’d always protect me.”

“Yeah, and I did.”

“Well, this is how you’re going to protect me now.”

“So you’re betraying me?”

“Betrayal presupposes some kind of loyalty, Wes.”

Finally he got unsteadily to his feet. He was a full foot taller than me, and at least eighty pounds heavier. If it came to a fight, I’d be outclassed. But if I knew him like I thought I did, it wouldn’t come to that.

“I’m your brother,” he said. “I’ve always looked out for you, despite
you
being the fucking hetero. And this is how you repay me?”

I clenched my fists. “Wes, you treated me like I was some kind of a freak. Talked to me like I was brain damaged. What you thought was kindness was a fucking insult. You made an effort, sure, but it only showed me how sad and pathetic and narrow-minded you really are at the back of it all. An
effort
isn’t enough. It shouldn’t have taken an effort if you’d really cared. And then of course, the little conferences with Mom and Dad you thought I didn’t hear. You, pretending to defend me while suggesting ‘gentle alternatives’, like the mythical “cure”, the “clinics”, and the “homes” where “people like me would find kindred spirits and a more welcoming community”. Seminars and classes and films for all of you so you could come closer to understanding what I was. Did you think I was that dumb, Wes? I knew what you were doing—trying to get rid of me under the pretense of caring. At least with Mom and Dad’s hostility, I knew where I stood with them, always. You, you were a fucking
snake
, and I hate you more than I ever hated them.”

“That’s not true.”

“It isn’t? Then why don’t you tell me exactly what it was you thought you were doing?”

He rubbed his hands over his face. I heard the rasp of stubble. “I wanted to understand,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be an effort, didn’t
want
you to feel different from anyone else. But everything I tried only made it happen anyway. It wasn’t my fault, John, no more than it was yours that you were born straight.”

“Well, you’re not going to have to worry about it anymore.”

“I didn’t worry about it, I fucking worried about
you
.” He tossed his cigarette in frustration and stood appraising me, his hands by his sides. They were trembling. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t you ever talk to me.”

“For what? Would it have made a difference?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Guess we’ll never know now though, huh?”

“Guess not.”

He glanced toward the window, ducked his head a little to see the gathering on the pavement. “What’s to stop me going out there and pleading my case, telling them the truth? Telling them about you.”

“Nothing, but since the Handover, people don’t have nearly as much faith in authority anymore. You should have seen how some of them spoke to Rickman. His grasp on this town is tenuous at best. As is yours. And you, looking like you do now…who do you think they’ll believe?” I stabbed a forefinger at him. “Authority?” Then turned that finger back to tap against the white collar around my throat. “Or God?”

“There’s got to be a better way of deal—”

“No,” I shouted, then lowered my voice. The last thing I wanted was for Rickman to assume I needed his intervention. “No, there isn’t.”

“I never asked for this, John. I never wanted it to be this way.”

“Sure you did. You and the rest of the ignorant. One day you woke up and decided that your lives would be better if you didn’t have to deal with my kind, and so you passed a law, and that law went through and made a whole lot of people angry. And so we said ‘To hell with this shit’ and set out for the colonies and left you to yourselves, knowing full well that race, color, creed, or sexuality means nothing when you put too many people together in one room.
That’s
why I stayed behind during the Handover. It doesn’t matter where any of us end up, the end result will be the same. There is no perfect world, no utopia, no fresh start, not as long as humankind is in charge of throwing the switch. Since the first stars collided and shat us out, we were destined to fuck each other up in as many creative ways as possible before the sun burns out and does the universe a favor. Die here, or die on some planet I’ve never seen, makes no difference. But this is my
home
. And I intend to die
here
under
my
own terms, not via some thrown-together contract from the world’s latest and greatest chapter in intolerance.”

Wesley stared. “It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when things were different, when we were equal. But all of that changed when people tried to fix
us
, like what
we
were was inhuman, some kind of a disease. So I know something about—”

“And yet,” I interrupted. “When the roles were reserved, all of that was conveniently forgotten. Like crying over the injustice of a massacre, then wiping out the people responsible for it. Like dropping a bomb on innocent people as a threat to the dictator who is killing innocent people. It’s only relevant when it’s happening to you, when it’s
you
being hurt. Otherwise…sorry about your fucking luck.”

He wiped a hand over his face. “I do love you John. I kept your secret for you.”

“And look what it’s done to you. Back at Rickman’s office, I said what I was doing was an act of mercy. I meant it. This is no way for you to live.”

“But I
am
living with it. I could have told them at the start, but I didn’t, because family is family and you’re all I have left.”

“Family means nothing anymore, Wes. That became clear at the Handover when Mom and Dad boarded that ship without looking back, without saying goodbye.”

“They loved you too,” he said. “In their own way.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Loudly. And I didn’t care what Rickman might be thinking out there on the sidewalk. “In their own way. Yeah. I remember how they loved me. Still have the scars.”

“What do you think this is going to achieve, John?”

I shrugged. “They’ll lose you and they’ll mourn your loss, and that will bring them to me. It’ll be the start of my influence. With Phoenix’s help, of course. Eventually, ten, twenty years from now, we’ll establish a foothold. And though we might never be a superior race, we’ll at least have a fighting chance of being an equal one.”

“That’s a fantasy,” Wesley said. “And even if what you’re planning comes to fruition, all it will mean will be another war, more lives lost. And you’ll have started it. Which I guess will make you like one of those guys that need a bomb dropped on them.”

“Every revolution requires sacrifice,” I said, then walked to the door, half-expecting—despite what I’d told Jim Laramie about my brother’s restraint—to hear the grinding click of a hammer being cocked. But there was nothing, and when I looked over my shoulder at him, Wesley looked like a ghost, an empty, pitiful thing. Except I felt no pity.

I’d meant what I had told him.

Every revolution needs a sacrifice.

And I was content to start with his.

*

Ten minutes later, he emerged from the house. He had changed his shirt and made a half-hearted and sad attempt to comb his hair. He was wearing his gun belt, the pistol polished and gleaming in the sun.

“Wesley,” Rickman said, by way of a greeting. “Sorry to have to come to your house like this.”

“Oh that’s all right, Mayor. Ugly methods for ugly business, I suppose.”

“Your brother has informed you of the charges?”

Wesley looked at me. “Yes he has. Very succinctly.”

“Do you have anything to say?”

He held my eye for a moment longer. If he were going to try to turn the tables, it would be in that moment. But it passed.

“Nothing that would do any good, Mayor,” he said.

By this time, a few of the townspeople had found their way to us. Jim Laramie was doing his best to keep them away from the house, but they seemed determined and he was only one man.

“There he is,” one of them spat. “That sonofabitch.”

“What have you got to say for yourself?” asked another. “Thought you had the whole town fooled, did you?”

“Can you come along with us?” Rickman asked my brother. “We’d like to have a chat, if at all possible.”

Wes stood with his hands on his hips, seemingly inspecting everything around him, from the pavement to the trees, to the sky. Then he grinned and clucked his tongue. “You know, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve never been much for the heat and I’m not planning on letting you burn me.” He glanced at me and smiled. “That’s a punishment best kept for the real bad guys.”

I watched as my brother withdrew his pistol, cocked it, then shoved the muzzle into the soft flesh under his chin. “Hope it’s worth it,” he mumbled, seemingly to no one in particular, but I knew who he’d been addressing.

“No!” Rickman cried, and started to run for the gate.

“Jesus,” Jim Laramie said, still straining to keep people back. “Somebody stop him.”

And just like that, the mood changed. Despite their hatred, people in the crowd began to scream. Faces that up until now had been grim with anger went slack with panic.

“Wesley, don’t!”

“Wait, Sheriff, wai—”

All sound was drowned out by the sudden bang as Wesley pulled the trigger.

Finally, he had made a mark on a house that wasn’t his.

*

Later, that evening, as I sat in the church confessional reading quotes from the bible I would later customize for my own purposes, the hatch in the mahogany partition slid back, startling me, as someone settled themselves in the small chair on the other side of the screen. It was dark in there, but I knew who had come. I could smell her perfume over the residual hint of incense.

“Bless me father for I have sinned,” Abigail Wray said.

“I know you have.”

She sighed, and after a moment said, “I’m going to miss him, you know.”

“I figured you might.”

“How are you feeling? Now that’s it’s over. Are you okay?”

“Better than okay.”

“No remorse?”

“None.”

“No guilt?”

“Nope. It had to be done. Guilt’s a waste of time.”

“So what’s next?” Abigail asked.

“Corman will be in soon, I expect, and he’ll leave with two grand of the parish’s money in his ass pocket just for selling his own people out.” Corman, unlike Abigail and I, was not hetero, just greedy.

“Lot of money,” Abigail said. “I can think of better uses for it.”

“We’ll get it back after the accident.”

“What accident?”

“The one Corman’s going to have.”

“Oh.” She chuckled softly. “But I meant, what’s next after today’s upset?”

“What’s next is we get Rickman dismissed. And replaced.”

“Tall order.”

“Not after today, it isn’t. In case you didn’t notice he didn’t exactly come across as an unshakeable leader. He wept over my brother, for Chrissakes. The town’s number one enemy. They won’t forget that.”

“Lots of people wept. He was a good man.”

I felt something sour rise in my throat. “Not if you knew him.”

“I did know him,” Abigail said. “Just not in the way you did.”

“Then you’re lucky.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that.”

I stretched, felt something in my back pop. “Go home,” I told her, and rubbed my eyes. “It’s late. We’ll talk soon.” Yawned. “One step at a time.”

“Linda’s going over the border at the weekend,” she said. “Heading into Harperville to see her cousin. She’ll be gone for two days if you’d like to stop by for a…prayer before bedtime.”

I grinned. “Sure.” Heard the rustle of her standing and raised my head. Her lips were just visible behind the mesh screen, her eyes faint glimmers in the dark above them. “Bye, Johnny,” she whispered.

I blew her a kiss. “Bye, Phoenix.”

When she was gone, I sat back and closed my eyes and saw explosions of colors, like fireworks, or galaxies simultaneously being born and destroyed at once.

Devouring each other for their places in this cold, unforgiving universe.

Outside

The morning bleeds a feeble light better suited to dusk.

Early birds have forgotten worms and instead shriek their protests into the vermilion sky. Winter is gone and the grass flushes with unhindered vitality, a new emerald hue lending a freshness to this time of the season. Around Alec Martin’s garden, a still naked ring of trees join spindly arms, engaged in some fraternity he cannot hope to understand, lost in the gentle song of morning.

The house is quiet.

He stands by the window, gazing out at the burgeoning morning and the odd light hanging in the air like a secret mist. In contrast, his thoughts are lucid, unobstructed for once by the chatter of the dawn people on the small radio which sits atop the counter. Silently. A flick of the switch when he first entered the kitchen, earned him nothing but white noise and a shifting, undulating wave of gibberish he was quick to mute.