Veil (37 page)

Ken had no idea what was happening, but he
couldn’t take it. Whatever was transpiring between those two men
was so profound and reached back so far that Ken felt like an
intruder. No one who wasn’t directly involved or affected should
witness that kind of personal, private display and he couldn’t
handle it. He felt like he was violating them. He quietly left the
lab and made sure the two men would not notice or be disturbed.

Hunter sat in the lab with his head on his
friend and cried, just as he’d cried hours before on the cliff,
except deeper, louder, and more unhinged. He cried to the point of
exhaustion. It felt like he underwent an exorcism and as it
subsided, he felt guilty. Guilty that he turned what was supposed
to be an amazingly wonderful experience with his friend into
something selfishly cathartic. He lifted his head and looked at
Brock, who was still looking down at him.

Brock grunted and mouthed the words, “Thank
you.”

There was nothing Hunter could say except,
after wiping his snotty nose with his sleeve as if they were
fourteen again, “Thank you too, bud.”

Brock closed his eyes, more out of exhaustion
than anything. Hunter was still seated on the cliff
,
and he stared off into the sky. He waited until he
ran out of tears. He must’ve sat there for twenty minutes. He
didn’t know what would transpire between him and Brock back in the
lab when that particular moment arrived. Besides, he needed some
time to collect himself.

Twenty minutes felt like time enough. He took
a deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth.

“Hope everything is ok on your end. We need
to get moving, though. People to do and things to see.”

While he jogged down the hill, he put on his
shirt and checked his pocket watch. At the bottom of the hill, he
climbed into the car, turned on the music, and drove off. Hunter’s
thoughts stayed relatively quiet during the ride.

In the silence, Brock began to notice some
things the events of the day overshadowed before. He noticed how
Hunter’s mind had a different feel to it than his own. It felt less
restricted. It felt bigger, but not bigger in the sense that it
held more intelligence; it seemed bigger in the sense that there
was more room to breathe, like it was more expansive. He told
himself to talk to Hunter about it after the Veil. He knew that was
the kind of thing Hunter would be interested in, although Brock
knew it was going to be close to impossible to explain.

Suddenly, they were parking. He wasn’t sure
when, but at some point Brock stopped paying attention to what
Hunter was doing and started paying attention to what was going on
inside of Hunter. He had a lot going on in there.

They were at Brock’s parents’ house. Hunter
got out of the car, went around to the trunk, took out a black
duffle bag
,
and made his way up to the
front door.

Hunter quickly rapped on the door a couple of
times and then opened it.

“Hellooooo…” he announced himself.

From another room came the voice of Brock’s
mom, “Hey Hunt, that you?”

“Sure is!” he shouted back and dropped his
bag near the front door.

Brock’s mom appeared from around a corner and
entered the foyer where Hunter was still standing. It was strange
for Brock to see his mother from that view. To see his mom through
another person’s eyes. She was shorter and she looked different.
Hunter saw her differently than Brock. He saw her face differently,
and the look of her face made him feel differently than it made
Brock feel, which also had the effect of making her look different.
It was interesting. That word again—interesting.

“Elizabeth Elizabeth,” Hunter smiled and gave
Brock’s mom a hug.

“Oh, Hunter,” she replied and playfully
slapped him on the shoulder with a rag. He always called her that.
Her name, after marrying her husband, became Elizabeth Olivia
Elsbeth, but since Elsbeth was a German variation of the name
Elizabeth, she thought it best to go by Olivia instead. Lest her
name literally be
,
“Elizabeth
Elizabeth.”

“Hey mom,” he smiled. He always called her
mom and she always allowed it. She knew all too well the tumultuous
relationship Hunter endured with his parents all his life, and she
couldn’t say she was very fond of the Kennerlys herself. Besides,
he was Brock’s brother in almost every sense of the word. She
hugged him back and he held her tightly before he suddenly scooped
her up and swung her around in the air.

In the lab, Brock gasped; he smiled wide and
open-mouthed. He couldn’t remember the last time he hugged his
mother. He literally could not remember it. As a fourteen-year-old,
the last thing he wanted was anything to do with his parents and
any remnants of being affectionate with his mom were pushed out of
his mind, so that he could focus on being a teenager.

Throughout his adult years, Brock experienced
limited physical contact or displays of affection with anyone and
everyone. The feeling of holding his mother in his arms immediately
shocked him and gave him goose bumps again. He never imagined how
starved for affection he truly was—especially from the most
important woman in his life. After moving to the west coast to be
closer to Hunter, he remained in daily contact with his mom. Brock
loved to write so
,
using the computer
attached to his chair
,
he sent her
messages throughout the day, every single day. As a result of the
accident or not, Brock Elsbeth was the consummate Mama’s Boy,
something for which he was unabashed and unapologetic.

“Oh Hunter!” she yelped and whacked his
shoulder with the rag again. “You put me down!” she demanded.

They laughed together and he set her down
gently. He grabbed the bag he left by the door and flung it over a
shoulder.

“Where’s dad?” he asked.

“Where do you think? Already in the basement.
As soon as I told him you were planning on coming over and could
help with the water heater, he headed down there and started
getting things ready. Then, not only did he decide to go buy a
whole new one this morning, he lugged it inside himself.”

“Oh lord.” Hunter shook his head. “He’s going
to give himself a stroke.”

“You know how he is.” She shook her head
along with him.

Hunter put his arm around Brock’s mother and
gently kissed the top of her head. Brock could smell his mother’s
hair and her perfume. His mother’s scent was one of his favorite
things in the world. Once, after moving to California, he came
across a woman who was wearing the same perfume as his
mother’s
,
and he had to fight back tears
when his nose caught her scent.

He began to tear up in the lab after smelling
his mother through Hunter’s nose and after experiencing for himself
how lovingly Hunter felt toward his mother. It was genuine,
familial love and Brock was surprised by how similar it was to his
own, as though they truly were brothers. He opened his damp eyes
and smiled at his brother who was already smiling back. He shut his
eyes quickly so he wouldn’t miss anything.

Hunter tossed the bag onto Brock’s bed and
unzipped it but didn’t open it. He reached inside and fumbled
around until Brock could feel him grab a few small, hard objects.
Hunter pulled them out and Brock saw they were little bottles of
alcohol, like his father collected. Hunter shoved them in a pocket
and reached inside to grab a few more before he zipped up the
bag.

He walked down the hallway and crept into the
den. He opened Brock’s dad’s wet bar mini-fridge and used the new
bottles to replace the ones he downed several nights prior. Even if
he already noticed some of the bottles were taken, they both knew
how dad felt about stuff like that. To dad, it was a sign of
respect for one to return things to the state in which one found
them. Elijah Elsbeth was all about respect and that attitude always
seemed to instill respect in the majority of the people around
him.

“Oh, Hunt! You didn’t have to do that,”
Olivia called out from behind when she caught him in the act.

Hunter finished placing the last couple
bottles in the mini-fridge and shut its door as he stood up.

“You know how he is,” Hunter smiled and
turned around.

“Yeah I do, and you know he already noticed
they were missing. So he’ll be even happier they’ve been replaced
than he would’ve been had he never noticed they were gone,” she
nodded. She knew Hunter understood exactly what she meant. And he
did.

“He sure will.”

Brock’s house looked so different to him from
Hunter’s height and through Hunter’s eyes. The smell was the same
though, and the feeling of it being home was as strong in Hunter as
it was in Brock. Hunter probably spent more time at the Elsbeth
house than at his own so that wasn’t a surprise to Brock, although
it did feel good to experience it firsthand.

I had so many ideas
, Hunter thought as
he made his way to the basement,
about what we could do today,
from skydiving to rock climbing to bungee jumping—all that. I had
no idea what to pick. There were a few obvious things, as you saw,
and I always had to put myself in your shoes, trying to predict
what you would want to do if you could. Coming here was one of the
last ideas I had but it was one of the best. I know how much your
parents love you and I know how much you love them. I know you’re
probably still looking at everything through my eyes, still
noticing how different things seem, but I want you to stop that for
now. For the rest of the time we’re home, I want you to pretend
like I’m you, because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to
pretend like I’m Brock Elsbeth
.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs,
Hunter stopped thinking.

“Hey son!” came the deep voice from a corner
of the basement.

“Yo, what’s up pops! Moms tells me you’ve
been busy down here trying to overdo it and get yourself hurt.”

“Well,” Elijah Elsbeth offered in his
defense, “it’s not every day I get someone over here to help me
take care of this old house, so I gotta make use of it.”

“I’m all yours.”

“Check out this beauty,” he beamed and
proudly showed off his new water heater. He informed Hunter that he
was still in the process of disconnecting the old one and added,
“Your mom didn’t tell me what time you’d be coming over so I wanted
to get everything ready.”

It was that last thing his dad said that made
things really sink in. It all came together and made perfect sense,
especially in light of Hunter’s words as he descended into the
basement. He understood Hunter’s message.

He and Hunter were so similar and his parents
treated Hunter like a son, so it wasn’t hard at all for Brock to
simply slip into being himself in that moment. As strange as it was
to experience life through someone else, only through Hunter could
the experience come so close to feeling as though he were inside
his own skin. Now he knew what Hunter meant; Hunter wanted it to be
Brock’s experience.

At that moment, Brock was a man in his
parents’ basement, who was helping his pops install a new water
heater. Exactly what a grown man would do: help out and take care
of his parents whenever he could. It was part of being a man and
something Brock felt he was never able to do, especially when he
considered how much his parents took care of him.

Brock felt completely at home as the two men
worked and chatted and joked and laughed and cussed, trying to get
the damn thing to connect the way it should. Although he stopped
feeling “not normal” years and years ago, the movement of Hunter’s
body was the closest Brock came to feeling normal than he had in as
long as he could remember. The sensation, combined with not only
being at home but also
feeling
at home, resonated so closely
with Brock that—it dawned on him. Hunter’s message dawned on him
and he truly understood it.

In the lab, Brock’s eyes flew open. Hunter
was staring at him; he was sitting there patiently waiting for
Brock to have the realization. He quickly glanced down at his
pocket watch and then at the notebook still in his lap. He looked
at Brock and smiled.

“Watch dad. Pay attention to him,” Hunter
whispered.

Brock closed his eyes. He had been paying
attention to his father, and that was how Brock realized what he
realized. He kept paying attention; he paid close attention as his
father casually talked to Hunter the exact same way he would’ve
talked to Brock. There was absolutely no difference; he treated the
two men, who were practically brothers, in exactly the same manner.
There was no change in voice or tone. There was nothing in his
father’s mannerisms to indicate he felt any differently toward
Hunter than he did Brock.