Blood Men

chapter sixty-two

It’s evening when I get home. Kids are out playing in the street, riding new bikes and new skateboards, yelling and laughing, all is good in their world, all is right and happy and I envy each one of them.

Nothing has changed at all in the house. It’s more of a tomb than ever. I walk through the rooms touching things, the walls, the furniture, running my fingers over anything in my path. I sit on Sam’s bed for a while and I sit on my bed for a while and I sit in the living room for a while. It’s like last week all over again only worse. The unbelievable thing that could never happen has happened-again. I can’t even cry. I can’t do anything. I sit in the living room with a can of beer but I don’t open it. I stare at the TV but don’t turn it on. I pick at the stitching on a cushion until it comes apart. The kids outside grow quiet. The day gets darker and they all head inside, some of them bored already with their new gifts. I get up to turn on the light and at the same time somebody knocks on my door. I head over to it, part of me not wanting to answer it, but a bigger part hoping it’s the last bank robber, that he’s come armed and with the ability to help me join my wife and daughter.

I don’t recognize him. He’s been severely beaten and can hardly stand, but he’s managing to do so by leaning against the wall. My dad is behind him holding the shotgun. He’s still wearing the security guard’s clothes from the hospital, only now there are large bloodstains on them, mostly dry.

“I got you a Christmas present,” Dad says, and he pushes the man forward.

I look at my Christmas present, at the blood on it, the torn and bruised wrapping, and I’m sick at the sight of it. I feel no different looking at Dad.

“Please, Dad, go away. It doesn’t matter anymore. This is all over. I’ve lost everything and they’re going to put me in jail for setting you free and the truth is, the truth is. . I just want this to be over. I want everything to be over.”

“This is the man who shot Jodie. This is the man who started it all.”

I close my eyes for a few seconds and exhale heavily, tilting my head back, focusing on the loss of Jodie and Sam. I remember the way Jodie fell forward, her face before the gun exploded, where she thought the worst thing that was going to happen to her was skinned palms and knees. I can still feel the weight of Sam in my arms, lifting her from the floor of the slaughterhouse and carrying her outside.

Then I focus on the man Dad brought me. An average-looking man I’d never have paid attention to in the past, maybe somebody who works at a gas station or repairs shoes, anything other than the man he truly is. His face has swollen up, his left eye closed, his right eye bloodshot. The edges of the duct tape covering his mouth are stained with blood. Dad pushes him again and he falls onto his knees in my hallway. His hands are tied behind him so tight they’ve turned purple. Dad steps inside and closes the door.

“I don’t care,” I say.

“Yes you do.”

Yes. You do.

“I know,” I say.

“I got one of the others,” Dad says. “I made him suffer. I made this guy suffer too. I was going to kill him when, out of nowhere, I realized how selfish that would have been. I’m sorry about what happened to Sam, son, I really am-and Jodie.”

“And this will make it better? Killing him will bring her back?”

“It’s not about bringing people back, son.”

“You think it’s about feeding the monster?”

“That’s what it’s always about.”

“For you, maybe. But not for me.”

“This is the man who shot Jodie! Damn it, son, don’t you get that? This is the man who killed your wife. This is the path he took that got your daughter killed. My granddaughter.” He takes a step back so he’s out of range from the man, reaches into his belt, and drags out a knife about half the length of his forearm and hands it over to me. “Now do something about it!”

The man on my floor doesn’t even move. There’s a shotgun pointing at him and two sets of eyes and all he has the strength to do is look down.

Do it! the monster says.

“No.”

“It’ll help,” Dad says.

Listen to him.

“Listen to the monster,” Dad says, struggling to keep the gun pointed ahead while holding the knife. He starts to lower it. “It’s telling you to do what I say, isn’t it.”

“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It’s Christmas Day. I’m going to spend it with Sam and Jodie.”

“Son. .”

“This is the way it’s supposed to be. You, him, the monster, none of you are supposed to be here.”

I step past them and out the door. There aren’t any kids in the street now. Nobody to watch. Christmas lights are flashing from behind windows and from on top of roofs, cars are hidden away in garages and parked up driveways and people are tucking themselves away for the night, tired from too much food, too much sun, too much running around visiting family members and chasing after children. Dad turns toward me. I wonder what Nat and Diana are doing tonight, whether their day has been broken up by small pieces of routine where, for one or two seconds out of every thousand, they forget what happened to Jodie and Sam, only to have it crash back down on them.

“It’s in the blood,” Dad says. “Don’t you feel it? We’re the same, son. We’re blood men!”

“I keep telling you, Dad, we really are nothing alike. More than you’ll ever know.”

“You’re wrong,” he says. “Listen to your voice, Edward,” he says, calling me by that name for the first time. “Take the knife. Let the voice guide you,” he says, and I take the knife from him. Killing the man inside, that’s not the way to go about bringing my family back.

There’s another way.