The only thing Nolan remembered was the smell of rain on hot cement and a red darkness from the blood in his eyes. And the taste, like rusty pennies.
It was the saddest thing really. His mother, the white trash princess of La Grange, Texas. She wasn’t born with the title, but married into it. Was destined for it. She had other titles. Dawn Fontaine. Crazy Dawn. Black-sheep-shit-for-brains Dawn. Daughter. Wife. Mother. Dead.
But she’d already been dead to them when it happened. His old man never came out and said it, but it was understood. Sure, she hadn’t just left her dope-growing, dope-smoking, dope-dealing husband, who was an authority on everything from who killed Jesus, to what your tax dollars actually pay for, to the purity of one’s blood, to the right amount of time to microwave a bowl of cold spaghetti—she’d also left her two young sons. But who could blame her? Leaving isn’t the worst thing a parent can do to a kid.
When she picked him up from school, she’d looked different. Like a fuzzy image put into focus. Her hair was different, and she had new clothes. She even smelled different, like shampoo instead of sour laundry and cigarettes. Her car was new too. Well not new, but new to her. Her new boyfriend’s car. A midnight blue Oldsmobile Cutlass with leather seats. She’d been all smiles and hugs, and in a hurry. He didn’t know what to say or do, because no one had ever picked him up from school before, and he hadn’t seen her in—he didn’t know how long—but he didn’t fight it. When she’d pulled out of the middle school’s parking lot, he’d figured they were headed to pick up Sawyer from the Elementary, but she headed for the highway. He figured, maybe she’d go back for Sawyer later, but he didn’t ask. She must have been taking him to wherever she’d been, but they didn’t get very far.
In the hospital he’d heard Sawyer crying. Screaming for their mother, but she wasn’t there, because she never even made it to the hospital—because she was already dead. Their old man beat Sawyer black and blue when he saw how Sawyer would’ve rather been in that car with her, cut up or worse, than to have not been. That Sawyer would have rather been dead with her, than alive with him. When they let Nolan out of the hospital, his face was zippered shut while Sawyer’s eyes were still purple and green around the rim, only Sawyer’s face went back to normal, while Nolan’s never did.
Fifty-seven. His old man said that was Nolan’s lucky number. Fifty-seven stitches, across his forehead, through his eyebrow, skipped his nose, and ran down his cheek where it t-boned with the slash that stretched from his ear to the corner of his mouth. That’s how it happened too—how that box truck t-boned his mother’s boyfriend’s Cutlass and sent them tits over ass until they landed belly up. Crushed like a beer can. Nolan didn’t remember that part, but his old man helped fill in the blanks.
The scars made him look tougher than he was, which had its advantages in the place he’d been for the last twenty-four months. On his last night, he hadn’t slept. Only lay there staring up at the ceiling and letting the seconds tick by until the state, or whoever, let him out of there.
Twenty-four months. And though Gunner had put his fat-fingered hand on Nolan’s shoulder and told him things wouldn’t be the same on the outside—but also that Nolan wouldn’t be the same, he saw no way in which that could be a bad thing. Because whoever he was, and whoever they’d been before, had got him twenty-four months in Huntsville prison.
Armed robbery—though he was only accused of being the getaway driver. Two years, pleaded down from ten, but still a hell of a long time to be in a place like that. He’d been lucky. He’d had a damn good lawyer. Even so, Nolan hadn’t fought it. When the sheriff showed up at their door, and Sawyer’s face turned white, he hadn’t fought it. Sawyer was barely eighteen, lean and broad shouldered, and almost pretty like a girl. In fact, the way he ran through girls didn’t leave many options for Nolan. Especially with his scars. And though Nolan was shorter, he was sturdier, stronger. So when his old man told him what they’d do to a pretty boy like Sawyer in a place like Huntsville, he didn’t fight it. In fact, his old man had done ten months there when Nolan was a baby. He still had friends there. He knew people. Nolan would be looked after. Except things are never that simple. With his old man’s hand at his back, he walked out the door and into a pair of cuffs and the back seat of the sheriff’s cruiser.
What choice did he have but to keep his head down and to do nothing? Doing nothing is its own kind of choice. Because if he’d made his mom pick up Sawyer that day, then she would be alive, and maybe they would be together and someplace normal.
Sawyer was his little brother. His best friend, even when they were trying to kill each other. They’d been getting into shit their whole lives, but only little things.
Climbing trees and throwing rocks at older kids, riding around at night on their bikes, shooting out street lights with their BB gun. When Sawyer was still little, Nolan got a smack for feeding him dog biscuits just to see if he’d eat them, because their old man said it was wasteful. And when Nolan started high school, he told Sawyer to take a shit on the pitcher’s mound at the school—and he did—happily. The poor kid got the belt for it, but later their old man was telling his friends like it was the funniest thing.
Of the two, Sawyer had the wilder streak. Their mother always called Nolan “the good one.” Which made Sawyer “the bad one.” Even after she died, Sawyer seemed to take any opportunities to prove her right.
The way his old man and Sawyer acted, it was like they hated her for running off. But it was more like they loved her so much, they hated her for how much was taken from them when she left—that they even hated her for dying. He did. But not anymore.
When Nolan went away, it was like he was doing time for being the one she came back for. The good one. Her first born. Her favourite. Before Sawyer, when Nolan’s old man was in prison, it had been only the two of them. The way it felt was like he was settling a debt. Not just with Sawyer, but with his old man. Like getting his collar bone broke and his face scarred up wasn’t enough.
Nolan hadn’t squandered his time inside. He’d read books from the library, which wasn’t something he’d ever done before. The only book in their house was a large glossy copy of The Encyclopedia of Horses his old man used to roll joints on. He learned things too. But mostly he read anything with a story that took him someplace else. And he’d worked out. Push-ups, chin ups, sit-ups. All the counting and the repetition, and the pain, made him forget where he was, and how much he wanted to go home.
When they finally did let him out, they gave him the clothes he came in with, the change in his pockets, and the new title of ex-con. One title his mother never had. When he passed the chain link to the row of cars, his old man climbed out of the old black Cadillac. His long white hair shone in the blazing sunlight, like some Viking king risen from the dead. Pale eyed and a face cut from stone, and though he was six feet tall, his old man had always been the tallest man in any room.
He’d hugged Nolan so tight it hurt. Patted his shoulders and laughed with something like joy, with real tears in his eyes. He looked older, smaller, lurching—no Viking king at all. The last twenty-four months had etched themselves into his forehead, and around his mouth, and in the corners of his eyes. His ratty band t-shirt stretched over his beer belly, faded beyond recognition. But the familiar skull and flames, a pale afterimage, had long burned into Nolan’s kid brain. Those twenty-four months, Nolan had been in a great big hurry to go nowhere.
When the time came and he had to make a choice, he’d do what Sawyer would never do—find a girl and settle down—and what his old man could never do, be the kind of man who’d make her want to stay.
