The Pallbearers

Chapter 9

Alexa must have seen it coming. She didn't argue or try to change my mind. Instead, she put her arms around me and pulled me close. I was choked up with emotion, not handling it well. She could feel my heavy breathing and maybe sensed I was closc to tears.

So much of this was complicated in a way that I couldn't even describe. You can cut yourself some slack as a child because all children start out being selfish. But you want to believe something better of yourself as a man.

I understood why I was so angry when I was at Huntington House. I even understood why I'd had the feelings I'd had about not wanting to go back there. But that didn't excuse the fact that I hadn't gone. Sometimes in life you have to make hard choices. There's going to be some pain along the way.

Alexa held me for a while, then she brought us each a beer.

"You've had two already. Might as well go all the way," she said, handing me a fresh bottle.

"I only had one." Then I saw Jack's empty sitting on the glass-topped table. "Oh, that. That was that biker guy, Jack Straw. He ended up bringing me home on his chopper. What a fuckhead."

"You gonna run him?" she asked me, knowing as surely as I did that he was dirty.

"He already told me he got sentenced to a long nickel for burglary. Went to Soledad. Got out in four."

"Figures." She sat beside me and held my hand. We sipped the beers.

"What'd you think of Huntington House?" I finally asked.

"Truthfully?"

"No, I want you to lie to me."

"I thought it looked pretty shabby."

"They were having money problems."

I told her what Diamond said, including the suspicion that Pop had set the office on fire to cover up records of missing funds. When I got through, she sat there thinking.

"It sounds to me like he could have burned down that bungalow," she finally said. "I know you don't want to hear that, but it's certainly a possibility."

"Yeah, it's gotta be looked at," I agreed, trying not to let her see my eyes, keeping my head turned away, not trusting what I might do or say.

Then, because I wanted to change the subject and because Alexa is one of the best I ever met on cold reads, I asked, "Give me your take on the other five pallbearers."

"Why?"

"I'm trying to understand why Walt picked me. I had barely spoken to him in years and yet, out of hundreds of kids who lived in that place, I'm one of six."

"I've got a take on that."

"Lets hear it, cause I'm completely lost."

"Five of the six of you share one major and very uncommon trait." She looked at me. "This is just instinct, so treat it for what it is."

I nodded.

"You're kamikazes. Nonconformists who aren't worried about actions that might cause a bad result. You're also all uncompromising and stubborn." "That's it?"

"Give me a psychologist and two weeks, I'll flesh it out for you. This is after only a few hours, not really trying." She smiled. "Of course, the biker is easy. Straw wouldn't follow a stripper upstairs after a lap dance. Complete renegade."

"Agreed."

"The Army corporal, Seriana Cotton, never smiled, and those eyes were always evaluating, always adding and subtracting. Her eyes are just like yours sometimes. She's armor plated. She'll take orders, but not blindly. She'd rather follow her own counsel. That's you, buddy."

"And Vargas?"

"The lawyer?" I nodded. "Rarely talks, never shows you what he's thinking. But when he does speak, he's willing to say the unpopular stuff. Vicki La whatever her name is…"

"Lavicki."

"She looks like a summer pastry in her little print dress and sensible shoes, but that's one very tough brass cupcake. She'll cut you no quarter. She will go down swinging, Shane Scully style.

"Diamond Peterson is the only one who doesn't fit. She's a den mother. But she worked with Pop, so she probably got there on a pass."

"You're saying, except for Diamond, they're all like me?"

"Not exactly. But they share your trait of suspicious nonconformity. You're all walk alones who don't mind breaking the pottery."

I thought about that for a long time.

"Comments?" she said, looking over at me.

"I guess I can see it," I said. "So why did he pick us?"

"I don't know. Maybe he wanted you to do just what you're doing. Study this and wonder. Maybe, for some reason, he didn't want a bunch of organization drones carrying his coffin."

We sat there for a while longer. Then she said, "You want me to make you something for dinner? I got the makings in there for a great casserole."

"I looked in the fridge. Cheese and noodles isn't a great casserole."

She slapped my arm playfully. "Stop complaining. We were going to Hawaii so I didn't go to the market. At least it's not peanut butter and jelly." Then she got up and went inside.

I wondered if that was it. Pop knew us better than most. He'd been there when the raw material was being molded. He knew how hard our centers were. We'd all known him well and none of us thought he'd committed suicide because it wasn't in his DNA. Pop just wouldn't shotgun his head off alone in his backyard. He was a party-wave guy. As Theresa had said, he wouldn't take a sand ride.

Did he pick me because I was such a stubborn uncompromising son of a bitch that I would never let go of this even if everything and everybody told me to? Was that the endearing quality that had earned me a place at his coffin rail?

Had he chosen four of the other five for the same reason?

It seemed pretty far-fetched. Pretty mystical. Anything with more than a ten percent bugga-bugga factor usually had me laughing, but I wasn't laughing tonight. Tonight I wondered if Walt was stuck in some heaven rip, backwalling beyond the break, watching and waiting for the six of us to do something.

I wondered if we were supposed to somehow avenge his death so he could ride that big rhino out of limbo and finally make it back to shore.