“Only an idiot brings a gun into a mess like that,” Shawn said.
“I wasn’t gonna use it,” Benjamin muttered.
“Then don’t bring it,” Shawn said. “Then you know you won’t use it. If you bring it you might use it, that’s how things are. A fistfight can turn into a gunfight real quick.”
Shawn spoke calmly, thoughtfully. His blond hair was filthy and uncut, growing wild, and his face was covered in stubble the color of shale. His eyes shone from under the oil and dirt, blazes of blue in clouds of ash. His expression, as well as his words, seemed to belong to a much older man, a man whose hot blood had cooled, who was at peace.
Shawn turned to me. I had been avoiding him, but suddenly that seemed unfair. He had changed; it was cruel to pretend he hadn’t. He asked if I’d like to go for a drive, and I said I would. Shawn wanted ice cream so we got milkshakes. The conversation was calm, comfortable, like it had been years before on those dusky evenings in the corral. He told me about running the crew without Dad, about Peter’s frail lungs—about the surgeries and the oxygen tubes he still wore at night.
We were nearly home, only a mile from Buck’s Peak, when Shawn cranked the wheel and the car skidded on the ice. He accelerated through the spin, the tires caught, and the car leapt onto a side road.
“Where we going?” I asked, but the road only went one place.
The church was dark, the parking lot deserted.
Shawn circled the lot, then parked near the main entrance. He switched off the ignition and the headlights faded. I could barely make out the curve of his face in the dark.
“You talk much to Audrey?” he said.
“Not really,” I said.
He seemed to relax, then he said, “Audrey is a lying piece of shit.”
I looked away, fixing my eyes on the church spire, visible against the light from the stars.
“I’d put a bullet in her head,” Shawn said, and I felt his body shift toward me. “But I don’t want to waste a good bullet on a worthless bitch.”
It was crucial that I not look at him. As long as I kept my eyes on the spire, I almost believed he couldn’t touch me. Almost. Because even while I clung to this belief, I waited to feel his hands on my neck. I knew I would feel them, and soon, but I didn’t dare do anything that might break the spell of waiting. In that moment part of me believed, as I had always believed, that it would be me who broke the spell, who caused it to break. When the stillness shattered and his fury rushed at me, I would know that something I had done was the catalyst, the cause. There is hope in such a superstition; there is the illusion of control.
I stayed still, without thought or motion.
The ignition clicked, the engine growled to life. Warm air flooded through the vents.
“You feel like a movie?” Shawn said. His voice was casual. I watched the world revolve as the car spun around and lurched back to the highway. “A movie sounds just right,” he said.
I said nothing, unwilling to move or speak lest I offend the strange sorcery of physics that I still believed had saved me. Shawn seemed unaware of my silence. He drove the last mile to Buck’s Peak chatting cheerfully, almost playfully, about whether to watch The Man Who Knew Too Little, or not.
* I remember this as the scar Luke got from working the Shear; however, it might have come from a roofing accident.
I didn’t feel particularly brave as I approached my father in the Chapel that night. I saw my role as reconnaissance: I was there to relay information, to tell Dad that Shawn had threatened Audrey, because Dad would know what to do.
Or perhaps I was calm because I was not there, not really. Maybe I was across an ocean, on another continent, reading Hume under a stone archway. Maybe I was racing through King’s College, the Discourse on Inequality tucked under my arm.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.”
I said that Shawn had made a joke about shooting Audrey, and that I thought it was because Audrey had confronted him about his behavior. Dad stared at me, and the skin where his lips had been tightened. He shouted for Mother and she appeared. Her mood was somber; I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“What exactly are you saying?” Dad said.
From that moment it was an interrogation. Every time I suggested that Shawn was violent or manipulative in any way, Dad shouted at me: “Where’s your proof? Do you have proof?”
“I have journals,” I said.
“Get them, I’m going to read them.”
“I don’t have them with me.” This was a lie; they were under my bed.