Authors: David Benioff
Tags: #Crime, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
Monty runs his tongue over the splintered roots of his missing teeth. The left side of his face feels as if it had been pressed onto the red-hot coils of an electric stovetop. He looks at his father and sees the determination on the man’s face, eyes unblinking, muscles in his jaw bunched behind his cheek like a wad of chewing tobacco.
‘They’ll take your bar from you.’
‘Jesus.’ Mr Brogan shakes his head. ‘My bar? They can take my bar to hell. You think my bar is more important to me? If you say the word, Monty, we go.’
‘They’ll find me. Sooner or later—;’
‘You know how they find people, Monty? They find them when they come home. People run away but they usually come back, and that’s when they get caught. So you go and you never come back. You get a job somewhere, a job that pays cash, a boss who doesn’t ask questions, and you make a new life, and you never come back.’
‘I can’t get away from it, Dad. Okay? I’m stuck with it, it’s going to happen. Please? Just take me to Otisville.’
But for the space of a mile, as the old car wheezes and hacks through the slush, as the tire chains chant
deh-deh-leh-deh-deh, deh-deh-leh-deh-deh
, Monty closes his eyes and unleashes the temptation, lets it run free in his mind. He has thought these thoughts a thousand times, but they’ve never been so pure as now, when a left turn westward can make them reality. Drive west and keep on driving, over the Hudson River, through the New Jersey suburbs, through states Monty cannot map, whatever lies west of New Jersey – Pennsylvania, maybe, and then Ohio? He imagines the hills and shivering cows, red farmhouses and white church spires, the black road carving through the middle of it all. He imagines miles of cornfields and wonders what cornfields look like in winter. He imagines the desert, a vastness of sand and wind-carved mesas, pitchfork cacti lining the roadside. A dusty town lost somewhere in this West, a bar with a sign on the window:
HELP WANTED
. Hiring on to barback, washing the glasses, sweeping the floor, sleeping on a cot in the back room. Going to the nearest city and finding the right people, buying a forged driver’s license and birth certificate. The bar owner would have a beautiful daughter, and at first he would warn Monty that the girl was not for him, but he would watch how hard Monty worked, how the glasses sparkled, how the floor shined; he would promote Monty to bartender and marvel at the place’s growing popularity; he would admit to his friends that here was an honest man, a man you could trust with the till, a man who never pocketed what wasn’t his. The bar owner’s daughter, black-haired and black-eyed, would smile at Monty from across the room; she would keep her lips closed to hide her crooked teeth. He would buy her a turquoise-and-silver necklace with six months’ savings, and she would cry as she unwrapped it; she would bury her face against his chest and wet his shirt with her tears. They would drive to the nearest river and lay their clothes on clay-colored rocks and step into the cold cold water, hand in hand, an eagle cutting figure-eights in the sky far above them. On a dry summer evening a brush fire would start in the western hills and quickly gather force, marching toward town, the jackrabbits and armadillos fleeing before it. Everyone would pray for rain but none would fall. Monty would join the volunteer firefighters and battle the blaze for three days and three nights, chopping down trees and clearing brush for a firebreak around the perimeter of the town, hosing the rooftops as the citizens packed their cars and prepared to flee. The volunteers’ efforts would be rewarded, the wind direction would change, and the town would be saved. A parade would be held on Main Street to celebrate the victory and thank the heroes; Monty would roll by in the mayor’s convertible and wave to the cheering crowd. One day the bar owner would pull Monty aside and ask him if he loved the man’s daughter, and Monty would tell him, Yes, with all my heart, and the bar owner would say, I’d be proud to call you son. Monty would shake the man’s hand and they’d have the wedding that Sunday. The bride would walk down the nave in her mother’s white dress, and Monty would wait for her, his new friends by his side, electricians and truck drivers and firemen and the high school basketball coach – Monty helps him in the winters, running the kids through drills, playing in scrimmages sometimes but never showing off, because these are just kids, desert kids, they dribble slow and have no left, but Monty never steals the ball, he never ever steals the ball. He would kiss his wife and the priest would smile and pronounce the benedictions. Soon they’d have children, green-eyed sons and black-eyed daughters. The kids would be country, going fishing during the long summer afternoons, riding horses through narrow canyons, attending church every Sunday in their blazers and ties and gingham dresses. They would grow up smart and kind and cheerful, they would get good grades and go to college, they would become doctors and engineers and teachers, they would have their own families and come home for the holidays, all their black-haired children in tow. And on one of these days – make it the Fourth of July – after the fireworks had boomed and spangled the sky, after the last ear of corn had been chewed down to the cob and the last crust of pie gobbled up by the littlest girl, after the babies had been put in their cribs and everyone else had gathered in the living room, black-and-white photographs of the past forty years hanging on the walls – Monty’s photographs, for this is his hobby and he’s become expert at it; his friends tell him he should have a show somewhere but he never does – Monty would stand in front of them and tell a story. Everyone would be quiet, listening, because Grandpa isn’t a big talker; this is a rare thing happening. The smaller ones, sitting cross-legged on the floor, big-eyed and open-mouthed, would stare up at him. His children would listen carefully, exchanging glances once in a while and shaking their heads, for what they hear sounds impossible, but they know it’s true, all of it, every word. Monty’s wife would watch her husband, not hearing the words because she knows the story. He told her the night before their wedding. He told her he would understand if she never wanted to see him again, that if she wanted he would buy a bus ticket and leave that night and never come back. His black-eyed wife would watch him and remember that night, and remember what she said: Stay, stay with me. Monty would tell the story to his family and the rest of the world would be still, his pit bull on the front porch would quit barking, the crickets and coyotes and owls would hush, and Monty would tell his story, of who he is and where he came from. He would tell the whole thing and then listen to the silence. You see? he would ask. You see how lucky we are to be here? All of it, all of you, came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening.
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