Amerikan Eagle (13 page)

“Maybe I don’t have a choice, you know? On the road after getting out, this was the only place I could go, at least for now. And tell me, what’s got you worried? Me getting arrested? Or you getting the heat for me being caught in your backyard?”

“I don’t want you to get arrested, and I’m also trying to protect my family. If you think so much of Toby and Sarah, you’ll be going someplace else tonight.”

“You’re my family, too, little brother.”

“If I get picked up because of you, Toby and Sarah will suffer. You ever take a moment to think about that?”

No response, just the old and complicated silence between two brothers who were never really friends. Sam felt like kicking something. It was always like this, always, like he and his brother were two radio stations endlessly transmitting past each other on different frequencies.

“I’ll be along in a while, I promise you that. All right?” Tony’s voice had softened, as if he recognized Sam’s frustration and was trying to make amends.

“Really? You got something going on? Something planned?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Me in my smelly clothes, my feet covered in blisters, no money, no place to sleep, oh yeah, I got plans, brother. Lots and lots of plans.”

Sam felt ashamed, thinking of how Tony must feel, finally being free after years of being in a work camp and
not getting anything but grief from his younger brother, save a cheap truck-stop sandwich.

Tony asked, “How’s Mom doing? Any change?”

“She has good days and bad days. Depends on when you visit her at the county home.”

“Next time you see her, if she’s with it, tell her I said hi. And Sarah, she still working at the school department? And Toby still a hell-raiser?”

“Yes on both counts,” Sam said. “You telling the truth about moving on in a couple of days?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“I can put you up someplace, if you’d like.”

“Am I hearing you right? A minute or two ago, you were so shook up you were going to hand me over to J. Edgar Hoover himself. Now you’re offering me a hidey-hole? A hell of a change of heart.”

“No, it’s not,” Sam said. “It’s being realistic. You stay on the streets, it’s easier for you to get picked up. I can get you in at a boardinghouse; a landlord I know owes me a few favors. What do you say?”

“If I say no, will you arrest me?”

Something thickened the air between them. There was a cry of something out in the woods being hunted and killed. Sam said quietly, “I should. I should grab you right now and see that you transported back to Fort Drum tomorrow. You’ve always been a pain in the ass, you’ve always thought you were better than me, but I won’t turn you in. It’s … it’s bad now, Tony, but not bad enough to turn in my own brother.”

Tony nudged him with an elbow. “You wouldn’t believe the number of guys back at the camp who were ratted out
by family members, either for a reward or to save their own hides. You’re a better man than a lot of folks.”

“Not sure what kind of man I am, but I won’t arrest you.”

“So you got both of my messages.”

“Hard to ignore them,” Sam replied. “I’ll always remember what you or me would do, whenever Dad got into one of his tempers, to warn the other.”

“Yeah, three stones or three sticks on the porch, and haul ass to Pierce Island to wait until his mood changed. Or he fell asleep in his chair. Or Mom told him to go to the cellar to sleep it off. Tough times but good times, brother.”

“Well, if that’s how you remember it. I just remember Dad drunk a lot, beating on us and making Mom cry.”

“He worked hard for us, you know that. The job ended up killing him.”

“That’s history, Tony.”

“The hell it is. It’s the reason I got into trouble back at the yard. Family can mean more than blood, you know? I wanted to reorganize the union, get better health care for the workers, increase the number of docs on shift … you know, the yard doc, back when Dad started coughing and coughing, didn’t even know about Dad’s service in the first war. So he told Dad to stay away from dust, told him his lungs would get better. Some fucking diagnosis. It killed him.”

Sam said, “That wouldn’t have made any difference, and you know it.”

“Oh, my cop brother, he’s a doctor now, huh? Don’t you ever think that if Dad hadn’t gotten sick, then he wouldn’t have drunk as much, wouldn’t have been so mean to Mom and us over the years? Don’t you?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know,” Sam said, hating to be put on the spot in the same place he had been so many times before.

“All I know is that what happened to Dad shouldn’t happen to anyone. And trying to do something about it got my ass in a labor camp.”

“Now your ass is out of a labor camp. Where exactly do you plan to take your ass, Tony?”

“You asking me as my brother? Or as a cop? Somewhere I can make a difference. Where else?”

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re always right, Tony, and that’s always been your problem.”

“And your problem is that you’ve always taken the safe and easy way out, Sam,” he shot back. “Star football player, Eagle Scout, cop, kiss-up to the mayor, and good little son-in-law. Or so you think.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Even in labor camps, news gets around. Met a guy out in the woods once, bundling brush. We got to talking, and when I told him I was from Portsmouth, that made him take notice. Seems he had a sister—an organizer from Manhattan, the ladies’ garment union—and she was on an arrest list. Got out of Manhattan ahead of Long’s goons, got on the Underground Railroad, and spent a night in Portsmouth. Should I go on?”

“Do whatever you want.”

“So she spent the night in Portsmouth in the basement of a little house. A little house that was near the river and across from the shipyard.”

“Tony …”

“So don’t use the Goody Two-shoe defense. You’re in the same fight as me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Different tactics, but trust me, your tactics—letting people sleep in your basement on their way up to Canada, that’s not going to change things. Direct action, getting people in the streets, fighting this government hand to hand—that’s what’s going to change things.”

“Sure it will,” Sam said. “It’ll change a lot of living people to dead people.”

“Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

It always ended like this with Tony, with one or the other losing his temper until all that was left were savage words and corrosive memories.

“Look, if you’re going to stay here for more than a day or two, the offer of that room still stands.”

“Please, no favors, all right? I know how to keep my head down from the feds and the screws. So go back home and be safe, and I’ll be out of here in a few days. Look, we all have our jobs to do. My job is other things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as I’m not going to tell a cop, even if he is my brother. I’m outta here, Sam. You take care of you and your family, and I’ll take care of my own things.”

Tony started walking away and Sam said, “I’m glad you’re out, but I’m not glad you’re here.”

His brother called back, “You know, you make this big old act of not liking me that much, and I know that’s so much bullshit.”

“You do? Why’s that?”

“Because of your boy. And his name.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Christ, for a police inspector, you can be dense. Yeah,
his name. Where did you get it? A relative on our side of the family? On Sarah’s side of the family?”

“I don’t remember,” Sam said. “It just seemed … just seemed right.”

“Your boy and me share the same first and last name, except for one letter. Tony and Toby. You can call it coincidence. I won’t. In a way, I think the two of you named him after me.”

Then the shadows swallowed him. Sam listened for a moment, then called out, “Tony!”

There was no answer.

After he saw his brother’s Packard leave the parking lot, he started walking to the city. He stood on the wooden bridge going from Pierce Island to the mainland, looking over at the shipyard lights. That’s where it had started, that’s where he thought it had ended, but now it was starting again. Organizing, fighting … back then he thought he was making a difference, but he realized it was just preparation. Preparation for that special day, the day when he would be there to make one shocking difference in this world, to make it better.

Sam was too much of just living in the day-to-day, not looking about him, not looking at the world that needed saving, that needed changing. His brother had no idea what was coming at him.

He squeezed his hands on the guardrail, thinking of his time in the labor camp, recalling all the things he had learned, remembering most the correct way to cut down a tree. Funny, in a time like this, with so much at stake, that you remembered how to slice at the trunk with an ax, knowing it was a delicate job no matter how clumsy it looked, hammering away at the tree, for how you cut it meant how it would fall.

If you judged wrong, a couple of tons of lumber were coming down straight at you, so you learned pretty quick which way to jump to save your life.

He resumed his walk into his old hometown, heading back to Curt’s place. Which way to jump. Except what do you do when there’s no safe place to jump?

The next morning Sarah had toast and coffee for breakfast, while he and Toby had cream of wheat. He and Sarah talked about random things—including a request for him to take the boy to school, since Sarah had to go check on her aunt Claire, who was feeling sickly yet again—but Toby kept on kicking his feet against the table legs while working on a drawing.

Finally, Sam said, “Kiddo, you knock that off right now and get ready for school or you’ll lose your comic books for the week. Savvy?”

“But I wasn’t doing anything!”

“What, you think I can’t hear? You’ve been kicking the table all morning, so cut it out.”

Toby said, “Fine!” and clambered off the chair, heading to his bedroom. “What is up with that boy?” Sam asked. “For the past month, he’s been a handful. Notes from school, the bed-wetting, and now this. What’s going on?”

Sarah poked the crumbs on her plate and didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I wish I did, Sam, I wish I did. If I could, I’d tell you.”

“Sarah, look, it’s—”

She reached over, touched the back of his hand. A nice surprise. “I’m sorry about yesterday. Sorry about not telling the truth. It won’t happen again. But … please … just tonight. I swear it’s over.”

“Sarah, Tony’s out.”

“What?” Her face grew pale. “Paroled?”

“No, escaped.”

“Oh, Sam,” she said, drawing her hand back. “That’s why you went out last night.”

“He left a signal for me. Something from our Boy Scout days. I went to see him at Pierce Island.”

She kept quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You’re not turning him in, are you?”

“For God’s sake, what do you think? I can’t believe you asked me that.”

Her eyes moistened. “I’m sorry. It’s just that … lately I don’t know what to think. There’s a teacher at the school, he has a son who’s in the National Guard, was about to get promoted. The son found some anti-Long flyers in a closet in his father’s office, and the son turned him in. Can you believe that? The son turned his own father in! Just so his promotion would go through.”

“Tony and I, we’ve had our rough patches. We’re not like those fun brothers you see at a Mickey Rooney movie. Sometimes I think I don’t even like him much. But I’d never betray him.”

“Then what’s going to happen?”

“I offered him a place to stay. He said no. He said he’d be leaving in a few days. It’s just that— Dammit, is there any way you can cancel tonight’s visitor?”

“No, I can’t, Sam. You know how dangerous phone calls can be. Messages sometimes get passed hand to hand, through couriers. There isn’t time.”

“We could lock the bulkhead door.”

“And do what?” she said. “Force him to sleep in the bushes? Try his luck at the hobo camp? Picked up, maybe, by one of your brother officers for loitering? He’s my responsibility.”

“All right. The last one. And Tony—forget I mentioned him. Officially, he’s still in prison. Any questions from anyone, that’s all you know. I’m sure the FBI or somebody will be checking up on him. You haven’t seen him, you don’t know where he is. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Days like this, you surprise me, Inspector. Just when I’m going to give up on you and think you’ve been seduced by Long and his people, you come back and stand up for something.”

Sam thought of Tony’s critique of him and said, “I’d rather be seduced by you than anyone else, Sarah Miller, and that includes the President. Don’t forget about that rain check.”

Sarah looked tired but pleased, may be because the argument about their upcoming guest was over. “Oh,
sweetie, that’s one rain check that will never expire. Here, I’ll even show you where it’s being stored.” She brought her hands to the hem of her skirt, slowly drew it up past her thighs. He moved his hand under her skirt, on the smooth stockings. He slid his fingers up, past her thighs. Sarah played a little game with him, squeezing her thighs tight, but as he pushed ahead, past the top of the stockings and the garter snaps, she moved her legs open. The skin of her thighs was soft indeed, and he heard her take a sharp breath as he moved his hand higher and—

Toby thumped out, carrying his book bag, eyes downcast. His parents straightened up, Sam breathing hard. “I’m sorry about kicking the table, Dad. I’m ready for school. And here. See? I finished my drawing. What do you think?”

The paper showed some sort of stick figure with a big head. There was a star drawn in the middle of the torso. “See? It’s you, Dad. Do you like it?”

“I sure do,” Sam said.

“Mom?”

“You made his head too small,” Sarah said.

Sam looked at his former cheerleader. “How about his heart?”

“Not big enough,” she said, smiling back, her gaze warming him despite all that had gone on before. Still … he had the feeling that all of this had been some sort of act, from the pleadings to the upraised skirt. The cast of her eyes didn’t match the brightness of her smile.