Chapter 18
In his cell, Chuck realized this was his first forced absence from Stan since his brother had come to live with him.
As kids, Stan stuck to Chuck like cherry powder to a Lik-a-Stix. School had separated them––Stan needed special classes––but they both knew it was temporary. Even when Chuck went to Afghanistan, it wasn’t like being ripped away from his brother. Stan, who was still living with their mom at that time, talked to him every day on the phone in the two weeks before Chuck left. He was proud of his joke––
You can’t forget me, Chuck. It’s AfghaniSTAN!
Yes, it was. His brother was like a landscape for Chuck, a grounding. In the weeks after Julia’s death, there was Stan. His presence was an odd comfort, but comfort it was. They knew without speaking how much they needed each other then. They cried and laughed. Stan peppered him with memorized trivia, things he’d find on the back of cereal boxes or in
The National Inquirer
.
More memories buzz-sawed in, but the one that stuck out in full color and sound was the 7-Eleven incident. Chuck was twelve and Stan eight. It was raining that day and Chuck was walking Stan home from his special class at school. Chuck had his bike and the back tire was low, so he went to the Shell station to give it some air, while Stan went into the 7-Eleven.
When Chuck came in he saw Stan in tears, a store employee holding him by the shirt. Stan was struggling in the grip. He hated to be held like that.
“What’s this?” Chuck said.
Another guy stepped around the counter wearing a 7-Eleven shirt. “He tried to steal some candy.”
“Did not!” Stan cried. “I forgot I had it!”
“Look,” Chuck said, “I know he didn’t mean––”
“Forget it. The cops are coming.”
“Come on, I’ll pay for it. We won’t come back.”
The counter guy, who looked about forty, poked his finger in Chuck’s chest. “You can leave. He can’t.”
Before Chuck could answer, Stan screamed and broke free of the other guy’s grasp. He charged the counter guy and head-butted his stomach. It was a beautiful move, Chuck would reflect later, like a fierce lineman putting everything he had into a tackling dummy.
The guy let out an
oomph
, but caught the back of Stan’s shirt. He sent Stan flying into the chips rack. Stan cried out and hit the floor, bags of Lays and Fritos tumbling on top of him.
Filled with instant rage, not thinking at all—except that they’d hurt Stan and he was going to hurt them—Chuck grabbed a pot of coffee off the burner next to him and threw it across the store. It shattered on the floor, hot coffee bursting out in a satisfying explosion.
The only other customer, an old Hispanic man, watched motionless from in front of the hot dog rollers.
There were three other pots on the coffee service. Chuck pushed them to the floor with a single motion.
The store employees came after him.
“Run, Stan! Run home and tell Mom!”
Chuck darted down the aisle, toward the drinks case, leading the counter jockeys away from Stan. He snatched bags of corn nuts and cashews along the way, then turned and faced the enemy.
Chuck had one of the best fastballs in the Tustin Little League. He showed his stuff.
By his later reckoning he threw four strikes and only two balls at the 7-Eleven All Stars. Two of the strikes got face. But it only delayed the inevitable by a few seconds.
When the two guys got to Chuck they tried to lay hands on him. Chuck got in a couple of good shin kicks and a back hand across one chest. But soon enough he was on the ground with the older of the two sitting on him.
But at least Stan was gone. He’d made it out. But when he came back to the store it wasn’t with Mom. It was with Dad, and that was not good.
His dad had to sort it out with the cops, and apparently did, after he agreed to pay all the damages.
At home he took it out on Chuck’s bare butt and legs with a nozzled hose. He laid on the stripes as if to transfer all the pain he held inside for being a failure as a father, for being out of work all the time, for having the burden of a son with special needs.
And Chuck knew then if he tried to whip Stan, Chuck would find his own rod and lay his father out. Then run away with Stan, hop a train, see the country.
Instead, a couple of days later, his father was gone for good. Last word was he was with a woman he met at a Reno casino and was riding off toward the east in her Mary Kay pink Caddy. They never heard from him again.
From then on it was only Mom and the two of them, in the little house in Tustin, where the end of the street looked like the beginning of all bad things.
And it was Chuck looking out for Stan, getting into more fights than he cared to think about, after every insult hurled at his little brother.
But now, in the 4 x 6 box, on the hard mattress, staring at the pea green ceiling, Chuck hoped Stan could make it through this night without him.
He hoped Stan wouldn’t dream about the wolf man.
Then the shadow dance began again, and Chuck knew he would not sleep. Not for a long time, at least. The figures from the past, traceable only to that war, mocked his remembering, because he could not remember fully, could not see the faces.
One of them said something. It sounded like
Rushton Line.
What was the Rushton Line? Where was it? Were these figures even real? Had he experienced this scene somehow? Was the VA doc right, that his very memories were traumatized and diffuse? Answers were always just beyond his grasp, and he knew that must be what insanity felt like. Maybe insanity, after all, would be the place he’d end up.
He fought back. He wouldn’t go nuts, not with Stan to take care of. And not until he got some other answers––about why he was here, and who was after him.
The shadows danced, the distant booms sounded, and Chuck pounded the wall with his fist. Rhythmically, punching at phantoms, music for the dance.