The Burning

Chapter 25

He came out of surgery in pain but out of danger. They had brought him to Highland, and for the next several days Andrea and my parents pulled shifts by his bedside.

On Wednesday my dad called. Luke was awake, he was alert, and he was ready to talk.

I met Cesar Rigo in the hospital lobby. We rode the elevator to the fourth floor. I knocked on the door and my father emerged. He told us he’d take a walk for the duration of the interview.

To give us privacy, he said.

His eyes were wet. Whatever Luke had told him, he didn’t need to hear it twice.

“Great thing you did,” he said to me.

My brother lay sunken in the bedsheets. Light slanted across his chest. Rigo started his recorder. Luke beckoned me close and began to speak.

Most days he got up before Andrea, but the previous night he’d had trouble sleeping, and in the late morning he woke alone.

He brewed coffee and sat on the longhouse steps facing the forest. Her car was gone. The sun had come up muddy, and a bitter note complicated the familiar morning smells of dirt and dew and grass.

So far as he could tell, their fight — yet another — had begun as a normal conversation, him proposing that they escape for a few days. Just hop in the Camaro and go. They were both stressed. Had been for so long. A change of scenery might help.

She’d looked at him, astonished.

Didn’t he get it? For months, years, she had been working so hard to fine-tune their environment; to reduce variables and keep everything as stable and consistent as possible. A change of scenery was literally the opposite of what she needed.

He’d tried to redirect but she was in a groove, not shouting but using her patient voice that plowed forward like an earthmover in low gear. Easy for him to say things like quote-unquote just hop in the car. It showed, clearly, that he still wasn’t treating this as a shared responsibility. Did he actually think racing around for hours on end in the Camaro would help her relax? She got nauseous sitting up too fast. Her medications had to be kept cold; how was that supposed to work?

He knew she was suffering. He’d grown accustomed to a heightened level of drama. But for whatever stupid reason, he opened his mouth: There was this amazing invention called ice packs.

Well, then.

He blew on his coffee. If he was honest with himself, he’d known what he was doing, pushing back. She accused him of not stopping to consider what taking a trip might mean for her. Had she considered what not taking the trip might mean for him?

His needs had ceased to exist, chased out by the all-consuming goal of having a child.

But you couldn’t live forever in crisis mode. Eventually it stopped feeling like a crisis.

You had to listen to what the universe was telling you.

He wished he had someone to talk to. Apart from James, the people at work were kids. And he and James didn’t have that kind of relationship; they were men past the age when forming new strong bonds was possible. Whatever you’d acquired for yourself by forty — that was what you got, and you counted yourself lucky to have it. To ask for more felt inappropriate, almost childish.

Still.

A week ago, it had gotten to the point where he’d texted his brother.

R u around. Can we talk

No reply. No surprise. Clay had a lot going on in his own life. His busy, busy brother.

The forest stirred. A deer, a young male, high-stepped through a thicket.

Luke smiled. “How about you.”

The buck raised its head.

“You want to hear my problems?”

The buck galloped off.

Soon Andrea returned with a trunkful of farmers’ market produce in canvas bags. Luke got up to help her. He told her he was sorry and reached to take the bags.

She shied away. “Sorry for what.”

Before he could answer, she went into the longhouse.

One of those days. He watched the trees for a bit, hoping the buck would reappear.

Time to get some work done. He carried his mug to the car shelter.

There was a tiny pebble mark on the underside of the Camaro’s front bumper. It happened. Lots of guys would treat the car like a museum piece, only trotting it out on big occasions. Luke disagreed. Cars needed to move.

He got out the masking tape and the touch-up paint and the clear coat. While waiting for the first coat to dry his mind wandered to a conversation with Rory Vandervelde. They’d met at the Lodi swap meet a while back and hit it off. Luke had toured the collection once or twice. It was mind-blowing, and Vandervelde himself was so enthusiastic, like a little kid on his birthday, that you couldn’t even be jealous.

In the end, of course, how much did they have in common? Same as with James: easy come, easy go. Didn’t bother Luke, he accepted it. They’d been out of touch for probably a year when, over the spring, Vandervelde phoned out of the blue. They exchanged pleasantries and then Vandervelde mentioned that his maintenance guy had upped and quit. He never offered Luke the job, just talked around it, testing the waters. Know anyone good?

Luke promised he’d keep his ear to the ground.

Six months had passed without a second call. Obviously Vandervelde would’ve found someone by now, and it shamed Luke to feel a pang of regret. He had a job, a good one, reliable, respectable. Scott took care of him.

Still.

He worked on the Camaro for several hours. At lunchtime Andrea came outside and began puttering around the chicken coop. She was making noise, shutting the door harder than necessary and sighing and shooting glances at him, expecting him to take the first step.

He wiped his hands on a rag.

He did his best. Before long, though, they were at it again. He decided to get some space. Her high sharp voice pursued him across the clearing. Where did he think he was going? Did he think he could leave her like that? It felt mean — but good — to rev the motor and drown her out. He drove through the trees, over the culvert bridge, and onto the main road. A truck was parked up the roadside. But his mind was elsewhere.

He stopped at a vegan taqueria in Oakland for a late lunch, bringing in his laptop so he could work while he ate. He couldn’t concentrate and closed it when his food came.

The server warned him the power could go out at any minute. Luke thanked her.

He gnawed at the burrito, nursed his lemonade. Andrea wasn’t answering her phone, which didn’t mean anything in itself. She left it switched off and in her car. He kept trying her anyway, every twenty or thirty minutes. That way, when she did think to check the phone, she’d see the missed calls and know that she was important to him, at the forefront of his mind. He regretted the way he’d left, and he felt ready not to be alone. But he couldn’t bring himself to go home just yet. At the very least he wanted to hear her voice and get a feel for what he was walking into.

Rory Vandervelde popped into his head again.

Why not?

Vandervelde sounded pleased to hear from him. Without being asked, he invited Luke to drop by. They arranged for six p.m. They didn’t discuss if this was to be a social call or a job interview. Even if the job was open, Luke wasn’t sure he wanted it. After they hung up, he did some googling on cars he knew Vandervelde owned. Couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

At four thirtyish the restaurant lights went off. To kill time Luke drove to Mosswood and watched the pickup players. They looked to be running in slow motion. The afternoon had turned brutally hot and the air smelled like lighter fluid.

The game broke up, and he tooled around some more, arriving at Vandervelde’s driveway a few minutes early. The gates were open.

Foot on the brake, he sent Andrea a text. Baby I’m sorry

He couldn’t leave it at that. She expected him to be specific with his apologies. Sorry for what? As he sat there, weighing what to write next, he heard a car coming and glanced up.

A white truck cruised past and went around the bend.

Two memories hit him, like a gut-punch combination.

That morning, the truck on the roadside.

A white truck, following him to his work. The guy with a camera.

Upsetting, at the time. But nothing happened. Nothing ever did.

Prison had carved a paranoid streak into him. He worked not to cater to it. The world is not a threat Andrea liked to say. Sound advice, even if he didn’t think she totally believed it herself.

He tried to recall if the truck he’d seen that morning was white, too. He wasn’t sure.

Not that that would have proved anything. Millions of white trucks. They were the boneless skinless chicken breast of commercial vehicles.

He stayed for a few more minutes, watching the road. The truck didn’t come back.

Six oh four. Somehow he’d managed to make himself late.

Rory Vandervelde met him at the door with drink in hand, a big smile on his rough red face.

“There he is.” He clapped Luke on the shoulder and tilted the tumbler toward the Camaro. “And there she is. The Green Goddess.”

He bounded down the steps to the motor court, ran a caressing hand over the hood. “I got a space all picked out and ready for her. Say the word, I’ll get my checkbook.”

Luke smiled weakly. “Anything’s possible.”

“Don’t be a tease, amigo. Well. To the Batcave.” Vandervelde started for the garage but stopped and slapped his thighs. “Ah, dammit. You know what, come on in for a sec.”

Luke trailed him into the darkened house. The living room picture windows framed the setting sun.

“Friend of mine sent me this whisky,” Vandervelde said. “Japanese. Fantastic stuff.”

“Water’s fine, thanks.”

“You sure? You’re missing out.”

Luke was sure.

Vandervelde brought a second tumbler from the wet bar, and, leaving his own drink on an end table, disappeared down the hall.

Luke wasn’t thirsty. He’d only accepted to be polite. He put his tumbler next to Vandervelde’s and went to the window. The coppered waters of the Bay rose in sudden peaks and melted away like unfinished thoughts.

“I never get tired of it.”

Vandervelde was crossing the foyer, carrying a pair of foot-long Maglites.

He joined Luke at the window and together they took in the view.

“I wouldn’t, either,” Luke said, knowing this to be untrue. He got tired of everything, that was his problem. One of many.

“For you,” Vandervelde said, handing him a flashlight.

Luke grasped it. Its heft stoked a strong scary urge to smash out the window and leap through the frame; flee westward through the hot doused city streets till he collided with the shore. Where he went from there was anybody’s guess.

He said, “Did you get your checkbook?”

He heard these words from outside himself, like an unauthorized third party had spoken.

Vandervelde’s smile got a little wider, a little flatter. No longer your and everybody’s best friend, but the shrewd businessman that he was. “Did you want me to?”

Luke’s pulse was racing, as if he had committed an intractable sin. “Let’s bring her in and see how she looks.”

They had to crank the hangar door by hand. The mechanism was hidden behind a portrait of Frank Sinatra. The spot Vandervelde had picked out was close to the entrance, next to a Ferrari giving six inches of clearance. Luke eased in while Vandervelde called out instructions and waved the flashlights like an aircraft marshaller guiding a 747 to the gate.

They stood before the Camaro in reverential silence.

“I think she looks pretty good,” Vandervelde said.

Luke nodded morosely. The effort involved in moving the car made a sale feel like a done deal, when really he’d only meant to try the idea on. But he couldn’t back out now, he was trapped. He’d acted impulsively. Nothing good ever came of that.

“What’s on your mind, son?”

Vandervelde was looking at him with curiosity. Compassion.

What was on his mind.

The warm, drowsy darkness acted as an intoxicant. The fact that Vandervelde was a virtual stranger helped, too, opening up a confessional space and giving Luke permission to unburden himself, like he’d sat down next to someone friendly on a long train ride. Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. Their miscarriages, the arguments, the monotony of his job, money — everything coalescing into a single yearning, a fire hotter and more painful than the sum of its parts.

He wanted something else. Something different. Even if different was not better.

He said, “It feels wrong to complain.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Complaining is a human right. If I can do it, you sure can.”

Luke laughed.

“What it sounds like to me,” Rory said, “is you don’t think you’re allowed to be happy.”

Luke said nothing.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. That’s what I used to think. And — okay. I know what it looks like,” Rory said, waving to encompass the cars, the outsized garage, his outsized life. “But you’re seeing me now. For the longest time I thought that by denying myself I was setting myself up for a reward down the line. It doesn’t work that way. You have to live while you’re alive.”

Outside the wind had picked up, howling past the open hangar door. The gaps in the trees were blue-black.

“Offer rescinded,” Rory said. “You still want to sell her to me, six months from now, that’s another thing. Tonight I’m not buying.”

Luke nodded, relieved.

“But.” Rory grinned. The businessman was back. He pointed at the Camaro. “First dibs.”

“All yours.”

“Atta boy. We’ll drink to it.”

Luke didn’t have the heart to turn him down. He’d pretend to take a sip.

There was a bar in the garage, but Rory was dead set on him tasting this killer whisky. Meantime Luke should feel free to look around.

Alone, Luke strolled the display floor, running the flashlight over one treasure after another. He ought to be heading home. It was getting late and he felt pretty talked out. He didn’t want to be rude, though, especially not after the kindness Rory had shown him.

He realized he’d forgotten to ask about the mechanic job.

Five minutes went by, then fifteen. Rory didn’t return. Maybe Luke had misunderstood, and he was supposed to find his way back to the house on his own time. He locked the Camaro — force of habit — and left the garage to head up the path. The wind hissed, showering him with pinecones and needles.

He stepped out of the redwoods.

A white truck sat on the motor court.

Luke got a head rush, his fingers tingled.

He stared at it, then came forward, mesmerized, following the flashlight’s bobbing spot.

The truck was parked by the front steps. Enervated moonlight dyed it a pale blue. Tonneau cover on the bed.

He got closer.

The truck’s cab was unoccupied.

He looked at the house.

The front door was ajar.

He reached for his phone.

The door banged open.

“Don’t fuckin move.”

The man in the doorway was broad as a coffin. He wore a mask and was aiming a rifle at Luke’s chest. Luke couldn’t see past him, into the house, to know what he had done.

“Rory,” Luke called.

“Shut up,” the man said.

He ordered Luke inside, keeping a bead as Luke climbed the steps and entered the foyer.

Rory was sitting on a living room sofa. A second masked man stood over him with a pistol. On the end table glinted the two tumblers, whisky and water, as though Rory and the man had been sharing a drink.

The rifleman told Luke to put the flashlight on the ground. Luke set it on the tiles.

“Lie down,” the rifleman said. “Hands on your head.”

“Take anything you want,” Rory said.

The second man pistol-whipped Rory, felling him to the marble.

The rifleman said, “Lie down.”

Luke lay on his stomach. He could hear Rory moaning in pain.

“Get over here’n help me,” the rifleman said.

The man with the pistol came over and held it to Luke’s cheek while the rifleman zip-tied Luke’s wrists behind his back and cleaned out his pockets.

The man with the pistol said, “Fuck we do with him.”

“Your problem, you deal with it.”

“How’s it my problem?”

“You’re the one so wet you can’t wait till he comes down the driveway.”

“He wasn’t coming.”

“He would, you could learn to sit still for five fuckin minutes.”

Behind them Luke saw Rory struggling to pull himself up on the end table.

“How d’you know?” the man with the pistol said. “You don’t know that.”

“Tell you what I know, I know you’re a fuckin moron.”

The table tipped, dumping the tumblers to the floor with a crash.

Both men spun around.

Rory lurched up and across the foyer and down the hall.

The man with the pistol swore and took off after him.

Seizing on the distraction, Luke rolled onto his side and began kicking at the rifleman’s legs. He heaved up at the waist and had almost managed to stand when something hard caught him square in the temple.

Several loud bangs; a long buzzing silence.

“... ’spect me to do? He was getting away.”

“Yeah cause you let him get away.”

Luke stirred. His head throbbed. He was on his stomach again. His ankles were bound, too.

“You asked me to help you.”

“Yeah, okay. Problem solved. Nice job, idiot.”

“Fuck you.”

“Stay here.”

“Where you going.”

“Just stay here.” A snicker. “Hey, Jace: Try not to let him get away.”

“Eat a dick.”

Footsteps went and came back.

“Whad you do?”

“Put him in the bathroom.”

“Fucks’at spose to do?”

“You want me to leave him out where they’re gonna see him?”

“They’re gonna see him. There’s blood everywhere.”

“Hey. Hey. Shut up. I don’t take lessons from you. It’s your fuckin mess I’m cleaning up here. Fuckin idiot. Whatever, let’s get the fuck out of here already.”

Luke readied himself to die. They had come for Rory but run into him; now he must be eliminated. He took a deep breath and felt himself leave the ground. The thought crossed his mind that his spirit was leaving his body. He found it encouraging that he was going up instead of in the other direction.

The men carried him to the truck. They raised the tonneau cover and locked him in.

He could hear them arguing in the cab, their words unintelligible over the churn of the engine. They drove a short distance and braked hard, throwing him headfirst into the front panel.

A door opened, a door slammed, they resumed driving.

Luke tried to keep track of the turns but he was dizzy and had bagpipes whining in his skull. He wriggled around in search of a weapon or a means to free himself. Found nothing and lay still, conserving his energy.

They got onto the freeway. He felt the rhythm of the seams in the concrete.

Then came a road that curved and rose and fell.

The truck slowed and shuddered. He guessed they’d been traveling for an hour but he had no idea in which direction.

The tonneau cover lifted. He kicked at them with his bound feet. He’d gotten disoriented in the lightless chamber of the truck bed, and he was facing the wrong way, battling air. They dragged him over the tailgate and onto the stony dirt, pummeling him with the rifle stock, the pistol butt, fists, boots. He considered himself a strong guy, but so were they, and he was trussed like a pig.

Hoisting him by the elbows they hauled him drooling and bleeding into shadows. He still expected to die at any moment. He thought they were stringing it out, for fun.

They held him down, cut the zip-ties from his wrists, and handcuffed him to something cold.

They were bickering again. They’d ripped off their masks and were slashing at each other with the beams of their flashlights. To Luke’s dismay there were now four of them.

No. Just two, he was seeing double.

He forced the images into alignment, piecing their faces together from brief illuminated fragments, like a mosaic displaced in time. The similarity of their voices and builds and their combative shorthand led him to conclude that they were brothers. One had a beard and the other did not. The beard made its possessor seem older and larger and lent him an air of authority.

By shooting the “old guy” No Beard had gone off book. Beard berated him for his stupidity. Now the pistol tied them to the crime scene. They had to ditch it.

No Beard opposed this suggestion. If they did that, they’d only have the rifle left.

Beard retorted: Whose fault was that. But he had an idea. He’d head out to some random spot, turn on the phone, and toss the pistol there. Then turn off the phone. That way if the cops traced the phone, or the gun got found, they’d be looking way over in the wrong place. Lemons to fucking lemonade.

“Give it,” Beard said.

No Beard glared but surrendered the pistol. Beard tucked it in his waistband, like a movie gangster. He crouched and stuck Luke’s phone in Luke’s face. “Code, bitch.”

Luke didn’t answer fast enough. Beard raised the pistol over Luke’s head like a tomahawk.

“Okay,” Luke said. His mouth was full of mashed tissue and blood. “Okay.”

He recited the passcode.

“You tell me right,” Beard said. “Cause I get there and that’s not right, you know what I’m going to do?”

Luke nodded.

Beard smiled. “Okay. Stay the fuck here,” he said to No Beard, and left.

The truck drove away.

No Beard paced, as if he could walk off his humiliation.

Luke’s eyes had begun to adjust to the dim. He was in some sort of pen. The surrounding structure was unwalled, similar to his car shelter but much larger. Through the open sides he could see the smudged charcoal outlines of other buildings. No lights were on.

Blood and snot dripped down his throat.

He said, “Can I have some water, please.”

No Beard startled. He stared at Luke, then took a two-step run-up and kicked him in the stomach. Pain radiated out from Luke’s belly to his fingertips.

In the morning he turned over and surveyed his new home.

His stall was one of eight, each measuring about thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, four on either side of a center aisle. The floor was dirt, tamped by hooves and flecked with old hay. His right wrist was cuffed to a rear railing, his ankles still zip-tied. His nostrils felt blocked solid but he could taste ammonia and smoke. Fading tang of manure.

Sunrise backlit a welter of tumbledown buildings. Nearest was a farmhouse. The truck was parked outside it. Overgrown fields stretched to the hills. A scrim of haze made it difficult to tell if the hills were high and far away or low and close. Electrical towers threw spiky shadows. The lines met at a place with long walls like a prison yard. Antennas stuck up. A power station.

He felt his face. The skin was taut and warm and his nose had taken a sharp left turn. It flared with pain at the slightest touch. With his tongue he probed the pits of missing teeth. Dried vomit scaled his shirt and pants. Bruises spread like an oil spill around the bulge of a snapped rib.

He grabbed the railing, shook it as hard as he could. It didn’t move. It was made of steel, formed in large sections, free of bolts, and anchored in concrete.

He got slowly to his feet and hopped along. The cuff allowed him six feet of lateral movement before he hit a cross-weld. Cupping his mouth with one hand he called toward the power station for help. He tried for a couple of minutes before deciding it was pointless. The station was farther off than he’d realized, and the fact that they’d brought him here, shackled him in the wide open, demonstrated that they weren’t worried about him attracting attention.

The exertion and the shouting had made his body ache. A cramp doubled him over. He couldn’t believe he’d chosen a burrito for his last proper meal. He breathed through it, then hopped to the corner and started to unfasten his pants.

Footsteps approached.

No Beard.

Stolid and dull. An overgrown kid.

He carried a canteen and a sandwich. “Down, fuckhead.”

Luke complied.

No Beard came into the stall and set the food and water just within Luke’s reach. Then he retreated to the aisle, like Luke was the dangerous one.

The sandwich was peanut butter on white. Luke choked down two or three bites. His throat was inflamed, chewing was agony. He drank the whole canteen.

No Beard said, “Throw it back.”

Luke resisted the urge to wing the canteen at the guy’s head. He lobbed it pathetically.

No Beard made to leave.

“Hang on, please,” Luke said. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Go on the ground.”

“Can I have some paper or something?”

No Beard bit his lip.

He humped away to the farmhouse, coming back with a paperback book, which he tossed at Luke’s feet.

“Thank you,” Luke said.

No Beard left.

Squatting with bound ankles proved a challenge. Luke wondered if the blows to his head had done something to affect his balance. He steadied himself on the railing. After using several pages to wipe, he leafed through the paperback. It was a legal thriller.

Breakfast was the only meal he received, both that day and the next two. There were periodic checks to make sure he hadn’t escaped. His attempts at conversation went ignored.

They hadn’t killed him. So they needed him for something. It followed that he was the one they had come looking for, Rory the innocent victim.

Luke felt like weeping. Another life he had destroyed.

He wondered which part of his past this was, come to collect.

He meditated. He hopped his six feet of railing, watched the white truck come and go. The book’s courtroom scenes were more exciting than what he remembered from his own trial.

On day four he woke shivering. The truck had left in the predawn, and the darkness had a speckled quality to it, like a damaged negative. His face burned with fever, the rest of him was cold. The cuff rattled on his scabby wrist. In the last seventy-two hours he’d eaten less than one full sandwich. His body couldn’t hang on to water, he was peeing like crazy, drying out like a wrestler trying to make weight. Hopefully he could get skinny enough to slip the cuff.

He tested it. Not yet.

A few more days.

Did he truly think he would be here in a few more days?

More concerning to him were his feet. They had ballooned, his toes were hard as rocks, they were purple and severely tender, except at the tips, where they were beginning to blacken and lose sensation. Around his ankles the zip-ties bit into angry red flesh. He’d tried every method he could think of for getting them off: filing them against the railing or against the chain of the cuff, torquing his shins to stretch the plastic until the pain became too much to bear. He couldn’t get proper leverage. He lacked the strength. The will.

He was weak. Always had been.

He lay on his side, shivering, waiting for the sun to top the hills. Instead a viscid orange oozed out, coating the sky and everything beneath like a broken yolk.

The truck came back.

No one brought breakfast. No one checked on him.

He tried to read but he was shaking so hard the words wouldn’t stay in focus.

The sky began to lighten, to lower, floating downward like a bedsheet and breaking against the earth in a white froth that spread across the land.

A singed reek filled the air. Smoke wound through the stall posts. It collected around him. Inside him. He opened his mouth to call toward the farmhouse and coughs tore through him. It felt like his bones were separating.

It was evening again when they appeared. For hours he had been holding still, passing in and out of consciousness, trying not to provoke another coughing fit. Meanwhile the smoke continued to gather, forming a cataract over reality.

They climbed the rise, symmetrical figures relieved against the darkness.

The instant they entered the shed Luke sensed the change in them. Masked, dressed in camouflage, they walked up the aisle, brimming with fraught, nervous energy.

This was the time they had been waiting for.

Beard used Luke’s phone to take a picture of him. He tapped the screen. Frowned.

“It’s not sending.”

“Lemme see,” No Beard said.

Beard ignored him.

“Ty. Give it.”

Luke remembered, during the home invasion, hearing one of them call the other Jace. Therefore Jace was No Beard, and Beard was Ty.

“There’s no fucking bars,” Ty said. “I’ll drive around till it sends.”

“You need to get back fore he shows up.”

“Just shut up, okay?”

They left, still jawing at each other.

A few minutes later, the truck drove off.

A little while after that, Jace returned. A walkie-talkie was clipped to his grubby jeans. He stood in the aisle, took a coil of wire from his pocket, unspooled it.

“Who’s coming?” Luke asked.

Jace used a small folding knife to trim off a few inches of wire, then wrapped the ends around his hands to form a garrote.

“Is someone coming?” Luke asked.

“He’s your brother.” Jace yanked the wire, testing it for strength. “You tell me.”

His walkie-talkie blipped.

Clay said, “I’m here.”