Envy the Night

11

__________

The letter was right where it belonged, framed on the wall beside the corresponding Silver Star. Frank read it while he drank his first beer, read from the date right down to President Harry S. Truman’s signature.

In grateful memory of Major Frank Temple, who died in the service of his country in the military operations of Korea, on August 22, 1950. He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die, that freedom might live, and grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through it he lives, in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.

The letter had hung above his father’s childhood bed, the only tie Frank Temple II ever had to the soldier who’d died in Korea, leaving a wife six months pregnant with the son who would bear his name. Frank Temple II grew up without knowing a father but knowing plenty about his legacy—his name was a hero’s name. During D-Day, on beaches filled with heroic acts, the first Frank Temple and his comrades still stood out. Using grappling hooks and ropes, his Army Ranger battalion scaled the cliffs at Point du Hoc, stone towers looming a hundred feet over the sea and protected by German soldiers with clear lines of fire. Into the teeth of that rain of bullets climbed Temple and his fellow Rangers. Casualties were heavy, but the mission was accomplished.

A tough act to follow, but Frank Temple II had done it for forty-five years. He had his war, Vietnam, where he served as a member of a specialized group so covert and so celebrated that it was still the subject of speculation decades later. MACV-SOG they’d been called: the Special Operations Group, elite soldiers whose chain of command seemed to end with the CIA instead of the Department of Defense. Temple II had matched his father’s Silver Star and Purple Heart, then come home to a career as a U.S. marshal, fathering a son who—of course—bore his name, his father’s name.

“You’ve got a lot to live up to.” That was his mantra for Frank, a thought shared with the same casual frequency most people used for “Good morning,” a constant reminder that Frank’s was a line of brave men and heroic deeds.

The hell of it was, Frank had always believed him. Believed in him, which was even worse. All the hero bullshit, the talk of honor and courage, it seemed to come from his father’s core. It was sacred. Right up until his father killed himself and a team of FBI agents arrived at the house, three months before Frank’s high school graduation, he’d believed in his father.

Now, sitting beside a fire with a lukewarm beer in hand, he wondered how long that would have continued. If his father had never been caught, if those FBI agents had never showed up at the door, would they sit here together, sharing a laugh and a beer, Frank steadfast in his faith in the man across the fire from him? Or would he have grown wiser with age, smelled the lie in his father’s words, seen evil in eyes that had always looked on him with love?

He would’ve been proud today, Frank thought. The way I brought the socket wrench down, the sound it made on the back of that guy’s skull, yeah, that’s Daddy’s boy right there.

He laughed at that, the sort of laugh you can allow yourself when you’re drinking and alone. Laughed for longer than he should have, then lifted his beer to the cabin, a toast to his return. This was their place, a spot of memories shared only with his father, no interlopers here.

He wanted to spill some tears, weep for his father. It had been four years since he’d last been able to do that. Driving through the Kentucky foothills in the middle of the night, listening to a radio station from some town he’d never heard of when the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here” came on, began chewing at the edges of his brain, then danced right through the center of it when one softly sung line—“Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?”—wafted out of the speakers.

There’d be no tears tonight, though, and maybe those he’d lost on a lonely highway in Kentucky would be the last. If this place, with all its good memories, didn’t affect him in that way, then no place ever would.

He wouldn’t cry for his father here at the Willow, but he might kill for him. If Devin was really coming back . . . damn, but that would feel good. Frank could do it, too. Bet your ass he could do it. Years of lessons didn’t disappear that quickly, not when they were taught by somebody as good as his father.

There’d been a day, sometime in the summer when he was fourteen, that his dad first broached the subject of justified killing. Really laid it out there. They’d been downstairs in the mat room, working out, Frank attacking and his father defending, blocking most of his attempts easily, but every now and then Frank would sneak a blow in. When he did, his father would smile. Glow, almost.

They’d finished and were sitting together with their backs against the cold concrete wall, breathing hard, and his father had said, There’s a lot of bullshit to what I do, son. And to what I did. With the marshals now and the Army before.

Frank thought he meant bullshit as in boring work, red tape and bureaucracy. That wasn’t it, though. As the sweat dried on Frank’s neck and back and his heart rate wound down to a slow, steady thump, his father had explained what he meant.

We chase down guys who are evil bastards, Frank. I mean evil, you understand? Guys who steal and kill and rape and commit any other manner of crime, anything you can think of. Some of them go to prison. A lot of them don’t. They get off on some technicality, get some lawyer pulling tricks, whatever. But they go right back out on the street and hurt somebody else. I’m not saying the system doesn’t work sometimes . . . I’m saying it doesn’t all the time. There are guys the system can’t touch who aren’t worth the air they’re breathing. And there’s a way to settle it. A natural way.

A natural way. That’s what his father thought of killing. That it was the most natural thing in the world, an inherent solution to human conflict, ageless and unsurpassed.

Frank hadn’t said anything for a while, until it became obvious his father wanted some sort of response. Then he’d asked what all of that had to do with the Army.

It’s the same thing. There’s this system in place, right, governments and generals and all the rest, and they’re supposed to keep the peace, and everybody wants them to do it without firing a shot. But you know what? They can’t. Because there are evil people in the world, son, and they’re going to keep doing evil things. And that keeps people like me in demand. People like me, and your grandfather, and you. Somebody who knows how to use a gun and knows when to use it.

That was the first time Frank had been officially included in the list, and it made his head go a little light, the honor of that shared company hitting him deep in his fourteen-year-old boy’s heart.

A few years later, his father’s body in the ground and face on the front page of the newspaper, the sad truth of moments like that one began to show itself to Frank. He understood what his father had been doing, understood that he’d been rationalizing with himself as much as he’d been offering a philosophy to Frank. But he believed what he said, too, and Frank saw the horror in that, saw the fallacy and savageness and the justification. Yes, the justification. It was still there. Smaller, maybe, weakened, maybe, but not obliterated. It couldn’t be. Because his father, evil man or not, was dead, and Devin Matteson—evil man for sure—was alive and free. Cut a deal, hung Frank’s father out to dry, and then walked away from it. No punishment, no penance, no pain. He deserved some of all of that. Damn sure deserved some pain.

There’d been another conversation down in the basement that stood out in Frank’s memory, and again the true significance hadn’t hit for a few years. They’d been down there working on elbow strikes—vertical, horizontal, front, rear, up, down, Frank’s dad always demanding greater speed, greater power—while his mother played Tom Petty music loud upstairs, trying to drown them out, unhappy with the violent lessons her son was taking to so well.

That day had been, Frank would later learn, exactly one week after his father came back from Florida having killed two men to avenge Dan Matteson’s death. One week living with the reality of it, maybe a couple of weeks of dealing with the decision itself. He’d paused to sip a beer—it was the first time Frank could remember his dad bringing anything but bottled water downstairs with him—and he’d studied his son with a critical eye.

Frank, he’d said, suppose somebody takes me out one of these days.

It had still seemed like a game right then, and Frank had answered, That can’t be done, nobody out there good enough, in a flip, teasing voice, thinking they were just working up to some of the chest-thumping bravado the old man liked to get into during a hard session. His eyes were different, though, darker and more intense.

It can be done, Frank. Probably will be done, someday.

Frank didn’t answer.

Suppose it happens, his father had said, and suppose you know who’s responsible. What would you do?

Still no answer.

Frank? What would you do?

Kill him, Frank said, hating how weak his voice sounded, like a little kid. I’d find him and I’d kill him.

Pleasure in his father’s eyes. Respect. He’d nodded, finished his beer, and said, Damn right you would. Damn right. Then he’d laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder and said, You’re a good boy, Frank. Check that—you’re a good man.

A few years later, Frank had been able to flash back on that conversation and once again see what had been working beneath the surface, see the rationalization, the justification, but there’d been something else there, too: a promise.

I’d find him and I’d kill him.

Frank Temple II had killed himself. No scores to settle. None.

I’d find him and I’d kill him.

Frank had endured a lot of pity over the years, some genuine, some false. Sometimes it would be expressed directly to him; other times it just showed in their eyes. Poor kid. Imagine having such a monster for a father. The problem, though, the one that Frank saw and nobody else ever could, was that he’d been a good father. Was a murderer, sure, got paid for it, yes, but while that might be enough to define him for the rest of the world, it didn’t work for Frank. Didn’t replace seventeen years of love. He was a good father. Frank wished he hadn’t been, at times. Wished that he’d come home drugged out and violent, knocked Frank and his mother around, threatened the neighbors, that he’d done all of those things that a murderer should do in his own home—but he hadn’t. He’d been quick with a joke and a kind word, supportive, interested. When Frank was eleven years old and struck out with the bases loaded to end his Little League team’s season, his father had held him in the car as he’d cried in shame and said, “Don’t worry, kid, next year we’ll cork your bat,” and the tears had turned to laughter.

Even those lessons in the basement—which the TV people had fixated on and manipulated to make his father even more of a monster, this man who would ruin a child with violence—they’d been the products of love. His father had seen a different world than most, a world of constant violence. He was preparing his son to go into it, that was all. Saw no other way to raise him than to make him ready for the worst.

“Welcome back.”

The voice came from just over his shoulder. Frank’s only thought as he whirled to face the speaker was that the man had approached in total silence. It was that realization almost more than the voice that allowed him to place his visitor.

“Uncle Ezra?”

A child’s nickname, but it was the first thing that entered his mind. The man stepped closer, out of the darkness, and offered his hand.

“Good to see you, Frank.”

Frank got to his feet and accepted the handshake. He was taller than Ezra by several inches, and though he had been since he was in his teens, it still surprised him. The man was bigger in his memory, and quiet and capable, with a habit of sliding out observations that would be the envy of any late-night comedian, delivered in the same slow, soft voice, the jokes usually coming and going before anyone realized what had been said and got to laughing.

“You given up on motorized travel?” Frank said, waving a hand at the dark woods from which Ezra had emerged. Hell of a way to make an appearance.

“Nice night for a walk.”

Anyone else would have started with the questions then: When had he arrived, why didn’t he call to say he was coming, how long would he be staying? Ezra offered none of them, though, just settled onto a stump beside Frank and said, “Cabin was in good shape.” A statement of fact, but one he wanted Frank to acknowledge.

“Of course,” Frank said, and he sat, too.

“You intending to let this fire go out?”

It was close to going out, though Frank hadn’t noticed that as he’d sat alone with his beer and his memories.

“Uh, no. I just—”

Ezra knelt beside the fire pit and adjusted the wood, fed a few fresh logs into the pile. The flames licked at the fuel and grew, the glow lighting Ezra until he stepped back, satisfied, and returned to his stump. Frank was staring into the fire, but Ezra sat sideways, so his eyes were never directly on the flames. Frank had asked his father about that once years ago. He doesn’t face the fire because he wants to keep his night vision, his dad had said. It’s an old habit, buddy. One that lingers.

“Boat’s in the shed,” Ezra said, “but I took the motor off and put it in the cabin.”

“I saw that.”

“Figured the shed might make an easier target if somebody wanted to break in. But I come around enough that most people know better.”

“Yeah. I appreciate that.”

“Hell,” Ezra said, poking at the fire with his boot. It got quiet after that, just the fire popping and hissing and the trees creaking in a steady wind. There’d been loons when Frank was a kid, lots of them, but tonight he had yet to hear one of those haunting calls. He’d been up in the summer on every trip but one. That year, they came in the dead of winter for a weekend of ice fishing. Frank had been prepared for a long, cold tramp over the ice to a small hole you sat beside on an overturned bucket or a stool. Instead, Ezra had driven them out onto the lake in a half-ton pickup truck, driven right across the frozen water without any hesitation. Frank, sitting between the two men, the gearshift banging against his knees, had been sure that the ice would break somewhere out in the middle of the lake, swallow them up, Frank finishing his run as a twelve-year-old blue corpse. The ice had held, though, and Ezra’s fishing shanty was small but warm. They’d pulled northern and bluegill out of the ice, and his father and Ezra had told stories while sipping bourbon-laced coffee.

“I got your message,” Frank said. A fast tremor was working in his chest, just the thought of Devin out there on the island enough to build the anger.

“That seems to have been a mistake.”

It was silent, and then Frank said, “What kind of mistake?”

“He’s not here,” Ezra said.

“Devin.”

“Anybody else you’d be asking about? Yes, Devin. He’s not up here, Frank.”

“But somebody is?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

Ezra hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a man and a woman and they’re both strangers to me. Might be Devin’s renting the place.”

Frank felt that tremor fade away, something—was it disappointment?—taking the anger’s place. It was crazy to be disappointed, though. Crazy. Because if he’d wanted Devin up here, then what, exactly, had he been hoping for? There was an answer to that one, and he didn’t want to dwell on it. Couldn’t let it into his mind for even a minute. Grady had told him that many times.

“It’s good to see you,” Frank said, and though he’d spoken mostly to fill the silence and take his mind away from Devin, the words were true.

“You ain’t kidding, son. Been a long time.”

“Going to be tough,” Frank said. “Being up here.”

Ezra didn’t look at him. “I would imagine so.”

Frank, who just moments earlier had been so grateful that Ezra wasn’t talking about his father, suddenly wanted to. What the hell did you say, though?

“Good memories, up here,” he offered. “Less so in other places. But up here, mostly good.”

“He wasn’t a bad man, son. Wasn’t a perfect one, either, but he damn sure wasn’t the way they made him out to be.”

“Tell that to the families of the people he killed,” Frank said, and he was surprised by the weariness in his own voice, the aged sound.

He finally heard a loon then. It cut loose from somewhere across the lake, the sound unlike anything else, riding the wind across the water to their campfire. He thought maybe they were both grateful for it. Something to listen to, something to stop a conversation that was going nowhere good.

“Like I said, I’m glad to see you, Ezra. Don’t want to make you have conversations like that. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be,” Ezra said. “And I think you do want to. Be surprised if you didn’t, at least.”

Frank didn’t respond to that. He was stuck in a memory, another night around another fire with his father and Ezra. He’d been fifteen at the time, and his father decided to show off some of the tricks he’d worked so hard to teach his son, show off those unholy fast hands. Watch this, he’d said to Ezra, watch how damn quick he is. They’d gone through the usual routine, his father with the gun and Frank trying to take it, or maybe the other way around. He didn’t remember the details of that night’s game anymore, just remembered that when Ezra had said, Yeah, you’re real fast, kid, his voice was sad and he wouldn’t look at either of them.

“I thought it was a bad idea, calling you,” Ezra said. “I’d promised to do it, but I still thought it was a bad idea.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you come up, Frank?”

He didn’t answer. Ezra looked at him for a long time and then nodded as if the question had been answered.

“We agreed to let it go,” he said. “A lot of years ago, we agreed to let it go.”

They had agreed to some other things, too. Like the fact that the Willow was sacred ground, and that Devin—who’d betrayed two generations of loyalty and friendship that were anchored in this spot—should never be allowed to return to it. They wouldn’t pursue him, would let him sit down there in Florida for as many years as he could last, but they also wouldn’t tolerate him returning to this place. Not unchallenged, at least.

“That’s really what you want to do?” Frank said. “Let him come up here and sit in the cabin, have a nice little vacation, enjoy himself? He brought my dad into it, Ezra, used a lot of bullshit about loyalty to set the hook, and then he turned around and gave him up to buy himself immunity.”

“You think I’ve forgotten? I’m just wondering about your intentions.”

“I’d like to ask him some questions,” Frank said.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Frank said, but he was thinking of the guns inside the cabin, beautiful, well-engineered pieces of equipment that had not been built to ask questions.

“Where’d you come from, anyhow?” Ezra asked, and Frank returned to the moment. “Postmarks on those letters bounced around a bit over the years.”

“I was in Indiana.”

“Working?”

“Taking classes.”

“What sort?”

“Writing. Had ideas about a book, but maybe a screenplay would be better.”

“I think that’s just fine,” Ezra said, and he seemed legitimately pleased. “You were a storyteller even as a kid. I remember that.”

“I just remember listening to the stories.”

“Well, sure, back then we had a good many more to tell than you. But I remember you had a way with it. Tell a story about a bike wreck and make it sound more exciting than anything I had to offer about a battle or a bear hunt.”

Frank laughed. Storytelling had been a big part of those trips, and eliciting any positive response from Ezra, a smile or a nod or one of those low, soft laughs, had been a serious reward.

“How long of a drive is it?” Ezra said. “Up from Indiana?”

“Took about ten hours.”

“Good trip, I take it?”

“Those hours I mentioned, that’s driving time. I left out a few hours of fun that started because I had a car wreck with someone I thought was Devin. He wasn’t Devin, but based on the guys who came after him, he’s not exactly peaceful, either.”

Ezra turned almost fully toward the fire and lifted his eyebrows in a way Frank had seen a thousand times before, usually in response to something his father remembered that contradicted Ezra’s memory.

“You want to provide a bit more detail on that?” Ezra said.

Frank provided the detail. Ezra listened quietly, shaking his head from time to time or making a quiet murmur of appreciation, but not speaking.

“Hell of a welcome back to town,” he said.

“No kidding.”

“I know Nora Stafford. Knew her father better, of course, but she’s a good girl. You sure she’s all right?”

“Other than the scare. I’d be surprised if the car she loaned out is ever returned to her, though.”

The half of Ezra’s face lit by the firelight went hard, his jaw shifting and eyes narrowing, and then he turned away and was entirely in the darkness.

“What kind of car you say that was?”

“It was a Mitsubishi SUV. Probably twenty years old. Little box of a thing. Blue paint, lots of rust.”

“Plate number six-five-three-E-four-two,” Ezra said, and Frank sat forward on the stump and stared at the older man.

“I don’t know if that’s the number. But you do. Want to explain that?”

Ezra sat quietly for a long time, as if there were a decision to be made and he wouldn’t be rushed toward it. At last he got to his feet.

“Let’s you and I take a drive.”

They walked back up the gravel road and then out to the Willow Wood Lodge without Ezra volunteering a word, no hint where they were headed. Got into Ezra’s truck and drove north, went across the dam and took Cedar Falls Road. Then it was left onto an uneven dirt road through the trees, Ezra taking it slow. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, turned the lights off, and cut the motor.

“Now we walk.”

For ten minutes, they walked without speaking, the only sounds those of breathing and sticks breaking underfoot. As they pushed up a slope covered in pine needles, one of the loons called again, and the sound seemed less magical than before. Chilling, now. A note of warning.

They went up the hill and back into the trees, and then a dark shape showed itself. Ezra knelt and flicked a cigarette lighter to life. The glow caught a rusted blue bumper and a Wisconsin license plate. Nora Stafford’s car.

“How’d you find this?”

“Saw him pull it in this afternoon while I was on the lake.”

“So he dumped it here,” Frank said. “Left it in the woods and had somebody come get him.”

Ezra shook his head, then extinguished the lighter. When he spoke again, his voice floated out of the blackness.

“Got in a boat and went out to the island.”

Frank’s eyes had been stunned by the brief light, and he blinked hard and searched for Ezra’s face in the darkness.

“Devin’s island.”

“Yes.”

“You told me he wasn’t—”

“He’s not here, Frank. I don’t know who these people are, but Devin is not here.”

Good, Frank thought, turning back to look out across the dark water toward an island he couldn’t see. Because if he were, I’d take that lighter from your hand and swim out to that cabin, set the place on fire and watch it burn and make sure he went with it. I’d watch it burn and savor every minute, Ezra. Make my father look like a preacher.

“But they’re connected to him,” he said. “That explains the guns.”

“I expect so.”

“So where’s Devin?”

No response.

“I knew it was him,” Frank said, speaking to himself as much as to Ezra. “Saw that damn Florida license plate, and between that and the message you’d left, I knew it was him, that he’d come back. I wasn’t wrong by much. Not by much.”

It was quiet for a while, Frank’s mind filled with things like ghosts and legacies and the sort of fate he had long wondered if he could avoid. The answer was here, a rusted-out car hidden among the trees.

“I think,” he said softly, “that I’d better call Nora Stafford. If this guy’s staying in Devin Matteson’s cabin, he and everyone around him are a hell of a lot more dangerous than I thought originally.”