Lineage (22 page)

Andy’s eyes finally focused on Lance’s face, which hovered less than a foot in front of his own. He blinked rapidly and expelled a breath that had been held in his chest like a caged bird. “What?” Andy said, as he looked around the interior of the car, gathering his bearings.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lance asked, relief setting in.

“I don’t know, I guess I just daydreamed for a minute.” Andy threw a look over Lance’s shoulder at the house again but didn’t hold it; instead, he shifted his attention to the grounds beyond the windshield.

“You feel okay?” Lance asked.

Andy exhaled again and shook his head like a dog tossing water from its ears. “I’m fine, don’t know what that was.” Andy looked back at Lance and smiled. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

The two men exited the car, Andy popping the trunk on his way to retrieve an overnight bag. He still seemed shaken as they approached the house, but didn’t falter when Lance led him inside.

“I’ll give you the grand tour,” Lance said, shutting the door behind them.

Andy set his bag down and looked around the open interior of the house. “That’s fine, but first I think I need a drink.”

Laughter echoed off the stony arms of the bay. The water, as flat as glass, still reflected the dying embers of the sun as it slid below the eastern horizon. Twin trails of white smoke slithered up into nonexistence from beneath the black grill’s hood on the deck, where the four men sat around a table strewn with bottles, bowls, plates, and silverware.

“So I said, ‘Mr. Jackson, I’d be happy to drive you home, but you need to put on some fucking pants before you get in my car.’” Andy’s face remained deadpan as he finished the story to the raucous laughter of Stub and John.

Lance sat back, grinning, in his chair, a glass of wine held loosely in one hand. He had heard the story so many times that it didn’t elicit the same hilarity as when it was fresh, but it endeared him to his friend all the more each time Andy told it.

Stub’s large frame shook with mirth and the big man wiped away tears from the corners of his brown eyes. “That’s the funniest story I’ve ever heard,” Stub said, still chuckling. John sat nodding his agreement beside him as he sipped a beer.

Lance had worried earlier that morning about how Andy and the two small-town men would get along eating together at the same table, but after several hours in their company, he realized his fears had been needless. Initially Andy had cursed him for not letting him in on the fact that they would be dining with strangers, his anger fed by the disorder that made his cool business sense thrive and stripped him of the ability to interact comfortably on a social level.

“They’re just regular guys, you don’t need to worry,” Lance had assured him earlier in the afternoon before the guests had arrived.

“I wasn’t prepared for this, you should have told me you were having other people over,” Andy said, as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot in the kitchen, a glass of wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim.

“You deal with people every day, it’s your job,” Lance argued, knowing full well how his friend’s mind worked.

“That’s different. I prepare myself every day and everything’s planned out.” After nearly a bottle of Merlot and an hour of reassurance had passed, Andy grumbled his assent at the situation.

John and Stub arrived shortly before
five,
both dressed nicer than Lance had seen them previously. Conversation flowed well over dinner, and was lubricated by another bottle of wine. Andy finally relaxed and, from all Lance could tell, seemed to actually enjoy himself.

Currently, the discourse had subsided, each man sipping at his beverage and looking out at the vista of the lake before them.

“Sure is a nice evening,” John said.

“Yes, it is,” Stub said. All the men nodded.

“Stub, I’m curious about your former career. There’s got to be a ton of stories that pop up in that line of work,” Lance said, sitting forward and smiling at the big man across from him. Stub laughed, setting his half-finished beer onto the tabletop and folding his ham-sized hands over his considerable stomach.

“Oh, there’s a few. I once caught a pig farmer who’d skipped bail on a battery charge down in
Indiana
.
Followed him to a farm that bordered his own.
Turned out to be a friend of his who was hiding him and about fifty crates of illegal firearms in an
outbuilding.
I found him face-up in pile of pig shit with nothing but the whites of his eyes showing!” Stub slapped his knee and a new round of thunderous laughter issued from beneath the man’s tangled beard. “Turns out they heard I was coming and decided that was the best place to hide.” Stub shook his head in wonder, while John chuckled into his beer.

“Ever go after anyone real dangerous?” Andy asked. Stub’s laughter subsided and his eyes squinted as he took another sip of beer. Lance could see him struggle with something internally and, after a moment, make a decision.

“Went after a guy down in
Florida
once.
Real piece a work. He was in and
outta
jail since he was sixteen. Last charge he pulled was rape, young woman barely twenty. Beat her half to death ’fore he did what he wanted with her. Lawyer got him out on bail somehow, and by the time I went after him, he’d disappeared pretty well.” Stub stopped and sighed.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Lance said, his stomach tightening. Stub shook his head in dismissal.

“Not
sayin
’ it doesn’t make it untrue. I had a hunch after I’d been after him about four days.
Went to the gal’s apartment that he’d raped.
Found him sitting there in her easy chair, surrounded by what was left of her. He cut her into so many pieces, if I wouldn’t of known it was a person there on the floor, I
woulda
never guessed it. Pulled my gun on him and it took all the power in my body not to put a bullet between his eyes. He just sat there, smeared in that young lady’s blood, smiling like he had a secret that no one else knew.”

Lance felt his heart pounding in his ears and glanced over at Andy, who had turned a pale shade of gray. John seemed unsurprised; perhaps he’d heard the story before.

Stub continued, “There’s evil in this world without reason or purpose, my friends. It just is. And God help you if you ever run across it.”

The rest of the evening slid away from them like the sun behind the trees. More drinks were poured and more stories told. When the clock in the kitchen read
10:00
and the shadows had condensed into full darkness, Stub and John said their goodbyes. Lance and Andy watched the taillights like disembodied eyes disappear down the drive until they’d winked out.

“Good people,” Lance said, piling dishes onto the counter as Andy went and sat in the alcove near the computer.

Andy nodded as Lance began to wash the dishes, his head buzzing pleasantly from the wine. “Mind if I read?” Andy said over his shoulder as he opened the Word document that now numbered in the hundreds of pages.

“Looks like you are,” Lance said. The house became quiet besides the clink of dishes and the intermittent swish of water washing suds from clean utensils.

Just as Lance placed the last plate in the dish-holder to dry, he noticed Andy saunter in and sit at the counter. His face held its color again under the kitchen lights as he poured himself another glass of wine.

“So?” Lance asked, leaning against the counter and drying his sodden hands.

Andy took a gulp from his glass and swallowed loudly. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written, by far.”

Lance felt the familiar glow in his chest. He had worried that he had misjudged the story and his talent, but now he felt validated; Andy always told him what he thought, honestly and truly.

“You think so?”

“Yes. It’s powerful, and I like the way you’re swaying the main character between damnation and redemption. Well done.” Andy raised his glass in a toast. Lance lifted
his own
in return, and both men drank deeply. “Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to pitch this to those bastards in
New York
.”

They retired shortly after finishing their wine. Lance had prepared the guest room upstairs for Andy, and as they walked upstairs, he watched his friend for any sign of the distress he had shown in the driveway. Andy only seemed tired, and after saying good night, the house became dark, its sounds reflecting the cooling temperature outside.

Lance lay awake for some time after he heard Andy’s soft snores from down the hall. Stub’s story still hung in his mind like a ghoul, circling him until his back was turned, and then pouncing. Stub had been right—there were some things that were so awful they defied logic. As Lance drifted off, he pictured the man Stub had described sitting in the chair, covered in gore. But when the man looked at him, instead of a stranger, he saw his father’s face.

Something woke him hours later, his mouth dry and his throat parched from the alcohol he had consumed. He
inhaled,
the sound loud in the empty room. His eyes searched the space around him; deep shadows clung to the corners, contrasted with milky light that leaked in through the open door. He
listened,
searching for the source of the sound that woke him, not sure that it had been a sound at all. He reached
out,
feeling in the darkness for the smooth stock of the Mossberg he knew was there. His palm touched it, and he drew it to his side as he stood from the bed.

Stopping at the door to his room, Lance peered at the house beneath him. Moonlight filtered in through the bay windows, and he could smell the lingering vapors of dinner wafting up from the kitchen. Nothing moved below him.

Trying to sidle out of the room without making a sound on the wooden floor of the landing was all but impossible, as a creaking board let out a shriek like a banshee. Without flipping on the light attached to the weapon, he made his way around the perimeter of the banister until he drew even with the guest bedroom. Not wanting to burst into his friend’s room with a shotgun in the middle of the night, he hovered outside the half-open door and listened for Andy’s breathing.

The refrigerator’s fan below him whirred into life and he lost any hearing advantage he had. Feeling stupid and as overcautious as a parent checking on a newborn, he nudged the door to the guest room open.

The covers to Andy’s bed were thrown back, his pillow like an island in the middle of the mattress. Andy was nowhere to be seen.

Lance flipped on the light in the room to confirm what he already knew. Ducking low and flipping on the white light attached to the shotgun, he scanned beneath the bed. Nothing but a few dust bunnies were revealed in its glow.

He stood, his heart picking up speed. He turned from the room and began shining the light in swinging arcs across the breadth of the house.

“Andy!” His voice sounded lifeless as it bounced off the hardwood floors. He sped down the stairs, being careful to point the gun at the rafters in case he tripped or Andy startled him. His eyes came to rest on the floor in the living room.

What he had originally disregarded as a patch of moonlight he now realized was the stain he had noticed his first night in the house. The moon had made a full revolution from waning to waxing and now hung bloated in the sky above the lake. Lance walked over to the spot and gazed at the oblong stain. It was exactly the same pattern as before, not a speck of the silvery blotch different. His vision traveled up and out of the window before him and his breath stuck in his throat like something solid.

Andy stood waist-deep in the water below the house.

Lance felt his eyes fly open and his bare feet slip on the polished wood as he scrambled past the alcove and into the kitchen, pausing only to set the Mossberg on the counter before yanking open the partially ajar patio door.

The night had become brisk and the dew from the short-bladed grass felt cool on his feet. It might have been a welcome sensation any other time, but as Lance plummeted down the slope past the gazebo, it only helped further the chill he had felt run down his back when he spotted his friend standing in the water.

“Andy! What are you doing? Get out of there!” His friend gave no indication that he’d heard him, and now that Lance had closed the distance between them, he saw that Andy wore only his boxer shorts, the waistline just visible above the lapping water.

Lance hit the water and felt as if he’d been struck by electric current. Even though the weather had been overly warm as of late, the water felt blindingly cold. In a matter of seconds, as he began to wade out to where his friend stood, his feet went from stabbing pain to pinpricks to numb, barely registering rocks and shells on the sandy bottom.

“Andy! Come back in!” Lance yelled at his friend’s back. Andy’s slight form still seemed a mile away as he waded in, the ice water creeping up his legs. He could see Andy’s backbone in the silver light of the moon, each vertebra standing out like the peaks of a mountain range. Lance’s mind turned to hypothermia, and he wondered how long his friend had been standing in the frigid lake.

Lance felt the bottom drop off and couldn’t help the involuntary hiss that left his lips as the water washed over his groin. Andy held his position, and now Lance could almost touch him. His friend’s head sat tilted on his shoulders, his face upturned, cupped in the moonlight.