Valhalla Cemetery was outside of town, situated on gentle rolling hills, wooded at the crests, with the headstones filling the valleys. There wasn’t a nicer place to be dead than Valhalla. The plot had cost a bundle, but it came with perpetual care, and Richard knew it would please Sara’s friends. They would believe her to be resting easier there than in a more crowded, less scenic graveyard in the old part of town.
It was January; the trees were black and wiry and the hillsides dun colored. An early thaw warmed the temperature to near fifty. Muddy remnants of snow were shrinking, filling the narrow lanes with running water. Richard winced as it ran over his new dress shoes but held steady to help Ellen and Sara’s other best friend, Opal, from of the back of the limousine.
Across the dead grass a clot of people waited at the gravesite, standing on three sides of the hole, staring expectantly into it as if it were giving instead of receiving today. On the fourth side of the grave, incongruously kelly green under a covering of fake grass, was the soil that had been removed. It was oozing back into the earth in drips and drabs as the ice melted.
Dr. Ravi, not yet American enough to know he didn’t have to show his respect for the dead if they didn’t have an MD, stood alone and to one side. In a tight group at the opposite end stood Dylan and two “counselors.” Discounting the psychiatrists and high school teachers, Richard doubted if there were half a dozen college degrees in all of Drummond.
“Brother,” he said and left Sara’s friends looking daggers after him, past him, toward Dylan. Richard hugged his brother and was startled to feel hard muscle where a boy should have been.
Dylan leaned awkwardly into him and Richard realized they had him in handcuffs. Anger flashed through him like klieg lights coming on in a dimly lit theater; suddenly every corner was thrown into stark relief. Illusion was destroyed, stark reality exposed.
The men who had brought his brother to his adopted mother’s funeral in shackles had no more original thought than dumb animals. Far from stirring compassion in his breast, it made him want to bludgeon them with a sledgehammer the way they felled cattle at slaughter houses. For a brief moment, time enough for the guards to see the darkness behind his gaze and shift uncomfortably without knowing why they did, he considered them as dead meat. With the barest of nods, he released them. It would be inappropriate to make a scene at a funeral.
Dylan smiled, shrugging off the embarrassment of the manacles. Clumsily, he clasped Richard’s arm in lieu of a hug. “Whoa,” Dylan said and banged gently on his brother’s arm, pretending to listen as if to ringing steel. “Been working out, huh?”
Richard was inordinately pleased by the compliment. Though he courted admiration, he didn’t really care much about it. But when it came from Dylan, Richard basked in it. He was Dylan’s best friend. And Dylan was his.
“You, too, buddy,” he returned the compliment sincerely. “Pumping iron? Don’t go cliché on me. I don’t want you coming out looking like Bluto.”
For a moment they grinned at each other, foolish as puppies. Then, “Hey, man, I’m sorry about Sara,” Dylan said quietly.
Remembering where they were, Richard sobered up as well. “Sara was good to me; we were good for each other. I’m going to miss her. It’s my fault . . . ” he began and was surprised to feel tears welling up.
“You can’t take that on yourself. You took care of her as well as she took care of you,” Dylan said. “You remember that. You carry the weight of the world, brother. Put some of it down. This one isn’t yours.”
The minister made come-to-order noises. Richard stepped away from his brother to share himself with Opal and Ellen. Ellen, the closer of the two, took his arm possessively and glared at Dylan as if he was going to murder them all.
After the service was read and Richard had dropped a clump of mud onto the casket’s lid—there wasn’t a dry handful of dirt to be had in all of Valhalla at that moment—the two brothers, two elderly ladies, and two prison guards watched the pastor leave, hurrying over the wet sod, picking and hopping like a water bird trying to scare up lunch.
“I wish we could have had Father Probst,” Ellen said sadly.
Richard groaned softly. Opal hissed, “Ellen!”
Ellen, looking older than she had on the drive out to the cemetery, her nose reddened with the chill, her eyes with crying, grabbed the breast over her heart as if stricken. “Honey, I am so sorry. I just meant . . . ”
“I know what you meant,” Richard said kindly and tucked her strong, chapped fingers under his arm. “I wish she could have had her priest as well. Mass was a comfort to her. I just wish I could have helped. I knew she didn’t want to move back into that house. Being there preyed on her mind. Jesus.” Tears had come again. Richard dropped Ellen’s hand to fumble under his coat for a handkerchief.
Opal snatched his arm. “There was nothing you could do, honey,” she insisted. “Sara’d been depressed for so long. Since her divorce really and then, well, you know, her son and all. You gave her more happiness than she would ever have had. Don’t you think different. Sara wouldn’t allow it,” she said trying for cheer.
“Sara spoiled me rotten,” Richard admitted. “Whatever I wanted, she let me have.”
“She couldn’t say no to you, could she?” Ellen said, and then she started to cry again.
“I think she was spoiled herself!” Opal said in sudden startling anger. “This was a rotten, selfish thing if you ask me. Doing like that! What did she think it was going to do to her friends? To you? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for letting you find her like she did.”
“Rich?”
Dylan’s voice cut through the outpouring of emotion that was choking Richard. He was glad of an excuse to move away from the women. Opal’s hand pulled out from the crook of his arm, catching and dragging at him like a strangling vine. It was all he could do not to jerk free.
“Bad day, brother,” he said smiling sheepishly at Dylan.
“No shit. Look, I’ve got to go. Sorry. You know I’d stay if I could. Those biddies are liable to feed you to death on casseroles and cake without somebody to back you up.”
“Let my brother come home for a bite,” Richard said winningly to the smartest-looking guard.
“Sorry. The service is all,” the man replied stoutly.
His nose was redder than the fifty-degree temperature and pleasant breeze could account for. This guy liked his booze.
“Come on,” Richard urged. “You and your partner could use a little stiffener, a little something to take off the chill. What do you say? I get the comfort of family; you get a break from routine.” Richard’s smile was a beauty. When it came to dentistry, Sara made sure he spent money on himself.
Rudolf the Red-nosed looked at his cohort. “Whaddyasay?” He could already taste the booze, Richard could tell. The other guard probably had his own addictions but Richard guessed they had nothing to do with drugs and all to do with the boys he “counseled.”
“Just the service. Orders.”
“Come on, man.” Richard tried to put the smile back on. “Just for a few minutes. Nobody has to know. What can it hurt?”
“No can do,” the priggish little man said stiffly.
“Don’t be such a jerk,” Richard snapped and knew he’d pushed too far. Even Rudolf suddenly got a spine.
“That’ll be enough out of you, kid. I’m sorry your aunt or whatever—”
“You morons get your AA degree at community college and a job bullying kids in juvie, and you have the nerve to come to my aunt or whatever’s graveside, my mother’s funeral, for God’s sake—”
“Rich, stop. Be cool. Come on, brother.” Dylan took his arm in both hands, the cuffs making it awkward. He shouldered in between Richard and the guards.
“It’s okay, Rich. Thanks. But they can make it worse back at juvie.” To the guards he said, “Give my brother a break. The guy just lost somebody. Don’t be such pricks. Back off, why don’t you?”
The two men backed off a couple of paces. Rudolph lit a cigarette. “It’s no biggie, Rich. I’m out of there in a couple years anyway. Eigh teen and I go to the big house. What a trip, huh? Come on, brother, you grieve for Sara. I’ll be okay. It’s okay.” Dylan leaned close, his forehead nearly touching Richard’s, his manacled hands still firm around Richard’s arm. “They’re not worth it, Rich. Take it from me. They aren’t worth the sweat.”
Richard breathed in slowly and deeply and tried to blow out some of the ice rime that had formed around his heart. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
Dylan was wearing a cheap suit coat Drummond had given him—or more likely lent all the boys—for formal outings. Richard put his hand on his brother’s wrist, causing the jacket’s sleeve to slide up exposing Dylan’s forearm.
“Tell me this is a joke,” he said, pulling Dylan’s arm out straight, staring at the ink marks on the white flesh.
Dylan said nothing. “Shit,” Richard said. “Why don’t you just have your
bros
write ‘lowlife ex con’ across your forehead and be done with it? You know what this does? This brands you as a piece of shit. When you get out, everybody will see this and think you’re a scumbag. Shit.”
Richard turned away and stared into the sun, trying to burn out the cold that was coming back into him. “Pumping iron and getting prison tats. You proud of yourself?” he asked without turning back.
“Let it go, Rich. It was stupid. I was high. Let it go.”
“High.”
“Let it go, man.”
There was something in Dylan’s voice that turned Richard around to face him. Dylan felt dangerous.
“Sure,” Richard said. He smiled and clapped Dylan on the shoulder. “Sure.” He walked with his brother and his brother’s keepers to the paddy wagon, an old station wagon tricked out with a screen and bolts in the floor to anchor chains and manacles.
“The big house,” Dylan had said. Richard thought he’d heard a hint of pride or boasting in the words. Like a baseball player in the minor leagues talking about going to “the show.”
Pumping iron and tattoos.
He had to get Dylan out while he was still Dylan, still his brother. If it meant kissing Phil Maris’s well-connected ass, so be it.
21
“Screw Phil Maris. He was nobody,” Rich said. “His aunt wasn’t even anybody; she just happened to be the governor’s secretary. The bastard should have done it years ago. You were eleven for Christ’s sake.”
“He’s right, Dylan. I’m glad Mr. Maris worked this out but you don’t owe him anything.” This from the backseat of the car, where a man in a heavy wool suit was sitting. The man who’d come with Rich. Mr. Leonard from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Dylan tuned them both out and watched the fields pass by through the car’s window. He wasn’t shackled, he wasn’t behind a heavy mesh security screen, and there was a handle on the inside so he could open and close his door. He could get out any time he wanted.
He was free.
A sick sort of guilt lay in the pit of his stomach like a piece of rotten food. Why wasn’t he brimming over with gratitude toward Phil? No big house, no state pen. Freedom. Anybody else would be high, back slaps all around, telling stories of what they would do when they got to the nearest bar, or restaurant, or woman.
Dylan just felt scared. He wouldn’t admit it to Rich or the guy in the backseat—he wasn’t really even admitting it to himself, not in words—but mostly he wanted to go home, back to Drummond. Not really. He didn’t really want to be there. But in Drummond he knew the rules, knew who he was, how to act. What would happen outside when people found out he was the infamous Butcher Boy? Inside he had his pals; they watched each other’s back. Dylan had status; an old-timer in a short-time facility.
Outside would they beat the crap out of him? Keep their kids inside when he walked by? Set their dogs on him? His mom and dad had had a lot of friends. Would they try to get him put back inside? There was no place for the likes of him in the real world. He belonged behind bars. Rapists, thieves, wife beaters, murderers—they were his people.
“Rochester’s out,” he said suddenly. “Minnesota is out.” He had no idea where he meant to go. Other than visiting California when he was four to see some cousin, he’d never been anywhere more exotic than Iowa.
Silence followed his announcement. The feeling of guilt spread like poison up Dylan’s esophagus. Maybe he was carsick, but he didn’t think so. The silence stretched. Miles slid by, fields green with summer air so clear and sweet the birds sang with it. Dylan was going to cry if he didn’t watch it. Like a little kid.
“I kept the house like it was,” Rich said finally. “I thought you’d want to come home.”
Why would anybody think he wanted to go home?
Home is where the heart is.
Dylan pictured his heart, out of his body, lying in the bloody hallway beside the mutilated corpse of his sister. The vision was as brief as it was toxic. He shoved the picture back into the recesses of his mind. These were things he’d worked at not seeing for years, worked to keep Kowalski from dragging up. He’d gotten good at it.