Firetrap (11 page)

22. JUST LIKE OLD TIMES UNDER THE LYNCHING BRIDGE

TREY
>

It was shortly after midnight, and most of the guests had gone home. I should have had the good sense to leave, too, but Kendra was clinging to me as if she was afraid I would disappear for another nineteen years, and I didn't have the heart to depart. In the sitting room where I'd first encountered my father, we were gathered together: the Carmichaels, assorted spouses, Jamie Estevez, and me. Behind Shelby Carmichael stood his nurse, a woman named Lonnie, whose skin was the color of black coffee and who dutifully remained part of the wallpaper. It occurred to me that the old man had never been without black help, always a driver or cook or gardener, the darker the better.

Echo was there with her husband, John Armstrong. Stone and India Carmichael were beside the old man at the head of the table. Kendra, tentative and leery of the new family dynamic, stood next to me with her husband, Cal, a stocky man who had a genial air about him.

“I guess we all know why we're here,” my father said. “The shindig tonight was a success financially. Raised what? India?”

“Something over half a million.”

There was some polite clapping, and then he said, “And of course Trey is back. As it happens, he's a captain in the fire department right here in town. He's working on the minority community's report on the Z Club fire.”

“I for one am so glad to see him,” said Kendra.

“That's right,” said Stone. “People make mistakes. They turn their lives around. And the past is the past.” Echo, who was staring at her shoes, displayed no emotion one way or the other.

Before anybody else could break the silence, John Armstrong stepped forward and said, “Are you people all demented?”

“Please, John—” Kendra began.

“You're all pretending as if this son of a bitch didn't rape my wife when she was fifteen. You're all pretending she didn't lose her virginity to this black bastard.” The room lapsed into a stunned silence, like the quiet after a cannon burst, and it was apparent that nobody had any idea what to say, including me. I thought the best thing would be to turn around and leave the room, take Estevez home, and try to forget the evening, but when I made a move to leave, Kendra grasped my arm and held me in place. She was not going to let go. In a sense, I had to applaud her for that.

Finally Kendra looked at Armstrong and said, “Pipe down, John. There's no call for that kind of talk.”

“I'm not going to pipe down. This bastard raped my wife. He shouldn't be here. He should be in prison.”

“I think—”

“Rapist motherfucker!” Armstrong said, standing directly in front of me and staring into my eyes.

“All I can say is I didn't do it.”

“Now you're calling my wife a liar?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Bullshit. You're the liar.” From the front of the mansion we could hear the string ensemble putting away their instruments and murmuring among themselves. “I don't believe you people,” Armstrong said, moving around the circle. A heavy man an inch or two shorter than me, he had a bulky chest, ruddy cheeks, and thick-knuckled hands. He looked as if he could take care of himself. Earlier in the evening India told me he was a painting supervisor for one of his father-in-law's construction companies. “Have you people forgotten your own family history?”

“You weren't even there,” my father said, “so how would you know?”

“I know Echo hasn't been able to sleep for twenty years. I know she needs to see a therapist twice a week.”

“Quiet, John,” Echo said.

“I won't be quiet. This man ruined your life, and they're all acting as if it never happened.”

“They're just trying to get through the evening like reasonable human beings,” Echo said. “Let it go.”

“It's not like there was a trial or anything,” said Kendra, straining to say something that made sense of this conflict.

“A trial? Screw the trial. You had enough proof to banish him from the family for nineteen years. Enough for a half-million-dollar settlement between the Carmichael and Overby families. There was enough proof that none of you people has seen him since it happened. And now you welcome him back as if he's been on a two-week cultural exchange to Canada? Get him out of here. Get him the hell out of here.”

Armstrong was as angry as I'd ever seen anyone, and when he stopped in front of me, I knew he wasn't nearly as drunk as he pretended. “You goddamn bastard,” he said, fists clenched at his sides, the blood vessels in his thick neck and along one eye bulging. I noted his tie as a possible point of leverage, even as I unknotted mine. Kendra let go of my arm and stepped forward, but Armstrong brushed her off roughly. On the other side of me, Cal, Kendra's husband, knocked over a lamp in his rush to put distance between himself and the possibility of a physical confrontation.

“You're right,” I said. “I am a bastard. A circumstance of birth over which I had no control.” I tossed a look at the old man. “And I may be damned, too, but I never touched your wife.”

“Liar! She'll never be the person she could have been, and it's all your fault.”

“I
am
the person I could have been,” Echo said weakly, although I'm not sure her husband heard.

“That was all a long time ago,” said Shelby, standing shakily. Lonnie, the nurse, stepped forward and took the old man's arm to keep him from toppling, holding it against her ample bosom.

“What you need is to get your black ass out of here,” Armstrong said at the same time that he took a wide, looping swing at me. He was powerful enough to hurt me if he connected, but he was just a little bit drunk and a whole lot pissed, and it took the edge off any skill he had. He threw two more quick punches and stepped into me, trying for my gut. I dodged the first blows and stepped inside the last. Neither Cal nor Stone, the only other able-bodied men in the room, made any effort to stop it.

His fourth swing was wider than the others, and because we were bumping up against each other now, it threw him off balance and he knocked over a chair.

“Let's you and me go outside and settle things,” Armstrong said.

“John, stop it,” said Echo. “I mean it. We have to go home.”

“Why are
we
going?
He's
the one who doesn't belong here.”

“He's right,” I said. “I'm the one who should go.”

“Don't you dare leave like this,” Kendra said.

At that point John Armstrong took another lunging swing at me. I stepped aside and gave him enough of a nudge that he slammed into the wall and made the chandelier rattle. Echo said, “Enough, John. Stop it. Can't you see he could beat your brains in if he wanted?”

“Fuck that. And fuck you all,” said Armstrong, barging out of the room.

Echo kissed India good-bye and followed her husband. With the assistance of his nurse, the old man sat heavily, caught his breath, and proposed a toast to the successful fund-raising project, though by now the bloom was off the rose and the only person who hoisted a glass was Stone.

23. CONFESSIONS OF A SHUNNED SON

JAMIE ESTEVEZ
>

After I refused his offer of a cab, Trey, amid a flurry of apologies for his earlier behavior, took me home on the Harley. It seemed that even if the family reunion hadn't exactly been a rousing success, the affair had burned off some of his excess nastiness. If I'd had a lick of sense, I would have taken him up on the cab, because the late-night breeze was bitterly cold.

By the time he shut the Harley off in front of my building, my watch said it was just after two in the morning. I was feeling a little woozy from the wine and maybe also from the bizarre revelations of the evening. “I'm a little, uh…” I said.

“I'm guessing you want an explanation for that scene back at the mansion?”

“It sounds complicated and…ancient.” He'd been accused of rape. He was embarrassed talking about it and so was I. But I did want to hear his side.

You could tell the thought of revealing this story was as harrowing for Trey as facing John Armstrong must have been. I'd watched Trey turning to his father and later his brother for intercession while he was being cursed and accused, and couldn't help but see the heartbreak in his eyes when he realized they weren't going to intervene. Echo must have been easily as mortified as Trey had been.

“When I was seventeen and Echo was fifteen, she and her sister were invited to stay at the family vacation home in the San Juans for a few weeks. India was eighteen and had just graduated from a private school back east. I had one year left in public school. Kendra and Echo were both sophomores and great friends. The adults came and went that summer as their business demands allowed: India and Echo's father, Harlan Overby; my father, Shelby; our mothers.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm cold. Would you like to come upstairs and talk where it's warmer?” I couldn't believe I was inviting someone up to my apartment who was by recent accounts a sex offender. I should be locked up for my own protection, just like Mama always said.

I had a small condo on the fourth floor with a partial territorial view between two buildings to the west so that I caught a glimpse of the sunsets. The small kitchen was buffered from the living room by a counter island. I seated Trey on the sofa while I ditched my helmet, scooped up a photo of myself on my bike before he saw it, and went into the bedroom, where I dropped my wrap onto the bed and checked my makeup in the mirror. My hands were trembling. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?” I asked as I came back into the living room.

“No, thanks.” He sat on one end of the sofa while I turned on the gas fireplace, then sat on the other end, tucking my knees and bare feet up. Even though I had an early flight in the morning, I was glad we were doing this. Maybe it would make working with him easier. Or at least tolerable. I couldn't help thinking about him and Stone Carmichael's wife, the way they'd talked alone in the parlor and then disappeared, the way they'd looked at each other. I didn't know whether they'd been allies in the past, enemies, or what, but I would have expected Echo's older sister to have had some protective instincts when her sister's erstwhile attacker returned to the scene.

I'd watched Trey all night and saw the strain in his relations with the family, especially his father, but I liked the way Trey spoke to the nurse, because he was the only man in the room who treated her like a real person. He was the same with the waitstaff, which gained him A grades in one of my major tests: treating waiters, receptionists, and ticket attendants like people instead of hirelings. Having worked as a waitress all through college, I felt this attribute to be important. Who would have thought I'd have to add not being a rapist to the list of qualifications I looked for in a man?

Staring at the flames, Trey seemed reluctant to return to his story. “You were in the San Juans for the summer,” I prompted. “You and some others.”

“Actually, just the last part of the summer. All the Carmichael boys worked summers—character building was big with my mother. I had a job at a lumber mill, but they closed down, so I joined the group late. It was basically an open house for friends and family, as it was every summer in August. Echo, India, Kendra, and I were the mainstays, along with my adopted mother, who has passed on now. I'd worked all through June and most of July at the mill, so it should have been nice to be on the island with nothing to do except lift weights for the football season and play croquet with the girls.” He stopped and thought about that summer for a few moments. “But the week I got laid off, Shelby Junior and his fiancée, Melissa, were killed in a car wreck on Mercer Island. As you can imagine, it was devastating for us all.

“But we all put on a brave face, because that's what Carmichaels do, and it was good to have Echo and India there, since they both needed to be entertained and it kept Kendra and me from drowning in grief. Then one night I come back to the house after taking a walk, and they're all staring at me like I'm some kind of monster. It turns out Echo had come in all beat up and accused me of raping her. I didn't even see her out there. I've never understood why she would accuse me.”

“Did they take her to the hospital?”

“I have no idea. As far as I know, the police were never called. The Carmichaels and the Overbys both go to great lengths to keep their personal problems out of the public eye.”

“You talked to India for quite a while tonight.”

Trey's gray eyes swung from the flames to me. “She was updating me on the family.”

“So all these years you've been hoping Echo would tell the truth?”

“Or get found out.”

“Did she have a grudge against you for some reason?”

“Not that I knew of.”

“Or maybe it was dark and she actually thought it was you?”

“Doubtful.”

“What were the Overbys like?”

“They'd lived on the East Coast most of their lives. My father did a lot of business with their father. They'd been friends since school. Like us, they were quite well off. Their mother was a reformed hippie type. Note their names, India and Echo. India told me tonight that her mother left their father not long after this happened and is now married to a guy on the East Coast who builds private jets.”

Trey lapsed into silence and stared into the gas fireplace. I watched the emotions flicker in his eyes with the flames.

“What did you say?”

“I told them I didn't do it.” He sighed and leaned back. “My father told me I was to cease all contact with the family. I couldn't believe my ears. I was being drummed out of the family. They'd made some sort of deal with the Overbys not to prosecute if I was banished. My father told me he was doing me a favor by saving me from the greater damage of prosecution and life in prison. Nothing I said could convince them I was innocent. Remember Renfrow from the party?”

“The man you were so rude to?”

“He worked for my father and Overby both—still does, I guess. He was there that night. He always looked at me like he expected to catch me stealing the family silver. To add insult to injury, it was Renfrow who drove me down to the ferry that night, neither of us saying a word, but him sitting there with a smug look on his face. There was no ferry until morning, so I waited by myself until the commuters started lining up at five.”

“You must have been bitter.”

“Assuming I was innocent, I must have been bitter? Isn't that what you mean?”

“I'm assuming you're innocent.”

“Thanks,” he said and seemed to mean it. “I
was
bitter. It's tough being the black sheep of the family, you know.”

“You think color had something to do with it?”

“You think it didn't?”

“I couldn't say. Kendra spoke up for you tonight. She seems to be on your side.”

“A few years too late. Oh, I don't blame her. She was in shock, too, and Echo was her best friend. She didn't know what to think. She was only sixteen.” He stood up and said, “I think I should go. It's getting late, and I have a history of being dangerous when it gets late.”

“Don't make jokes like that. You can't be disappointed with the way your life has turned out? I mean, if you'd been a Carmichael, we both know you'd be doing something else for a living, but you've got a great job as it is.”

“It's a job I love. My grandmother lived two blocks from Six. When I lived with her, she would take me there and the guys would sit me up in the driver's seat. Then she died, and I went away and was rich for a while. And thirteen years later I was back in the Central Area, and a few years after that, I was sitting up in that fire engine for real. It's an amazing job a lot of people want and very few get a crack at.”

“You wouldn't go back to that family if you could?”

As he opened the door, he gave me a fleeting look. “It's a moot point, isn't it? Because they're not going to ask me back. Tonight was a onetime deal.”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

“Oh, yeah. I'll never hear from any of them again.”

“One last thing.”

“What?”

“What's really going on with you and India?”

“We were friends once. Actually, more than friends. I guess you could say we have some history.”

“You've got a lot of baggage.”

“I'm a black man. That's what we do. We carry baggage. Or didn't you know that?”