by Liza Veale

 

            The desperation in his eyes that night had been sincere, even if his explanation of circumstances had not. We’d heard the droning wail and opened our doors to him breathlessly and without question, recalling the screeching of tires with certainty as he recounted his story. It was a hit and run, not serious, he just needed some ice. Yes, we nodded, we thought we’d heard something, yes must have been tires.

            It was my wife, badgering as she always does, that got the rest of it out of him. He’d just returned from three years in the navy. He was living off what his mother had left him after she’d passed, not six months ago. He was vague about the cause of death and he dropped his head, his dark hair curtaining his eyes as he told us the last time he’d seen her was the day he’d left for the force, that his request for discharge hadn’t been granted until last week. When asked about his father he’d told us distantly that he wasn’t around.

            “Oh you poor thing! I can’t stand it!” My wife brimmed with maternal pity at the sight of the boy. Hardly twenty years old with an innocence about him. An innocence that betrayed the darkness he seemed to cultivate. Yes, this one was hurting.

            “Well, go on and join us for Sunday dinner.” I had said, “Where’d you say you were staying?”

            “Hotel Nopal, it’s, I guess it’s temporary.”

            “Not tonight you aren’t, we’ve got a spare bed you’re welcome to.”

            It wasn’t the first time we had taken someone in for a while. I am the minister of our town’s congregation and mine is not the type of work you leave at the office.

            “Hotel Nopal?” My wife was yelling from the kitchen. “I just heard about some kinda brawl took place in the parking lot! That hotel on Clementine?”

            “Yes, maam.”

            “Well, now you shouldn’t be staying at a place like that. I heard a couple of men ended up shot dead, the rest of ‘em in the hospital as good as dead. Seems like every other weekend I hear about something like this. And if you ask me these brawls- gang wars or God knows what- it’s all just criminals taking each other out and saving police the trouble. It’s these stray bullets of my concern, we don’t need to be reminded about Davis’ little boy-”

            “Now Helen don’t speak like that in my house. It’s not our place to love any of God’s children less than the rest, you know that.”

            “I know and I’m sorry, I just don’t feel safe in my own community and it’s not right. My own home.”

            “Helen, whatever evil goes on out there, well it’s tragic, but that’s not your home.” I lowered my voice, “This is your home, right here. And you are safe. None of that can touch you here.”

 

            The boy’s name was Gael. He possessed an accent subtle enough that it hadn’t registered until the mention of his name. In this part of Texas everyone’s skin is some variation of brown.

            “Gael, this is my son, Paul.”

            Paul’s a good boy. He was just accepted into Bible College and I need no assurance he’ll make an extraordinary preacher some day. Raising him was the most important thing I’ll ever do as a christian. This religion is about redemption and if gifting the world with the life of Paul, a peacemaker for sure, doesn’t absolve me of my sins, I don’t know what will. I lived for 32 years before I found God and it’ll take all the time I have left to make up for the way I lived.

            The night we invited Gael into our home, Paul had been out at the shooting range working things over. He’s a pretty good shot and I believe the time he spends down there accounts for his even temper and level head everywhere else. You can’t deny away man’s aggression; our challenge is focusing it effectively and constructively.  Paul, he never missteps.

            When we got a minute alone, he asked why Gael was staying here. Not for any reason other than curiosity, of course; Paul’s a very generous and hospitable boy. When he asked, I found I didn’t have much of an answer.

            “He’s fresh out of the navy and he hasn’t got any folks.”

            “Oh,” Paul had said. “Okay. But isn’t he, you know, grown?”

            “He deserves better than a sleez-ball hotel and we have room. Do you need more of a reason than that, Paul?”

 

            Gael left before we got up the next morning, but when I returned in the evening I found him and my wife suited in matching aprons chopping vegetables.

            “I offered to make you and your family dinner but Mrs. Aldridge refused,” he beamed.

            “I told him I won’t be denied my purpose as the mother of this family!”

            “She’s allowed me to accompany her as sue chef. How does it smell?”

            “Uh, smells great,” I said, “Sweetheart, weren’t we having the Kendrick’s over for dinner?”

            “Yes they’re coming in an hour. I thought Gael could join us. Is something wrong?

            “Oh, of course. No, that’s fine.”

 

            And it was fine. Gael regaled us with stories from his time in the navy over dinner. He was honorable. My wife doted on him like he was a watery-eyed puppy. I suppose I was thrown off by something in his demeanor when I walked into the kitchen that evening. Something in his demeanor that was startlingly and entirely different than that of the wounded boy we’d first met. In that apron, standing next to my wife, laughing easily, Gael had found relief. Over night.

           

            My wife insisted, against his half-hearted ‘no, no, that’s too much’, that Gael stay until he got his feet on the ground. He helped her with gardening, he ran to the store when we were out of milk. Once, I came home and he was down on the rug polishing my loafers. He blushed and fumbled to put the top on the jar of polish while I managed some appreciativeness.

 

            He’d been with us for a week when Paul and I were headed out to the shooting range after my Sunday sermon.

            “Mind if I join you?” Gael had said from behind us, his words punctuated by the sound of a clip locking into a pistol.

            “Not at all. Dad you don’t mind?”

            Gael’s face was unabashed by intrusion. The shooting range was our place, Paul’s and my place, I thought. But then, irritated by my own sourness, I smiled,

            “Course I don’t! Pick up that pistol in the service, Gael?”

 

            We rode to the range in silence until Paul turned on the Christian rock channel. The fact that they sing about the Lord never could distract me from the fact that it’s bad music. I turned it off.

            Paul always has this sadness about him while he shoots. In the moment before he pulls the trigger it’s as if he has only now noticed what he’s doing, like someone else put the gun up to his cheek, someone else held his breath. And then the shot is fired and it all comes back to him, and then the sadness.

            “Well I’ll be! Paul! That’s the best accuracy you’ve struck in a round, long as I been watching!”

            “Thanks, dad. I really feel foc-” Bullets blasted from Gael’s gun, rapid, relentless explosions, one after another. Paul and I cupped our hands around our ears, wincing, and fumble to get our muffs back on. When his round was done he whiped his muffs off and exhaled; smiling like a maniac, his lips glossy and wet.

            Stripping down his target, a paper person cut-out, Gael whistled.

            “You like that? What do you think of that Mr. Aldridge?”

            “Wow, Gael that’s- that’s impressive. Maybe a little warning next time, we had our muffs-”

            “Impressive?! That’s nothing! This comes easily to me, picked it up real fast in the navy.”

            “That’s good, I...” But Gael’s eyes were hungry, dangerous. Something there made me look away. Reaching for Paul, I could feel Gael’s eyes on me, could feel myself crippling in his gaze.

            I drove back home unable to explain what had disturbed me but unable to explain it away; only able to drown it out with the terrible, terrible Christian rock.

 

            That night Paul left to meet with some friends and I went up to bed with Helen. It was the last time we’d ever see him. His body was found on the side of the highway with four bullet wounds to the chest.

            With help from our neighbors and friends, Gael cooked for us and took care of the house work. I prayed for Paul’s soul. I prayed for Helen because the woman I knew didn’t surface from the griever for days. I slept because I knew Paul was peaceful.

 

            It was 7:30 in the morning and I was awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking of frosted flakes. I went down to the kitchen and there was Gael scrubbing the inside of the fridge, something.

            “Good morning Mr. Aldridge. Get any sleep?”

            “I slept fine.”

            After a moment he went back to cleaning, I got myself a bowl of cereal and watched it get soggy. At this point I was pretty sure. I’d placed the familiarity in his face. I’d put it together, from what he’d told me.

            “Gael, how’d you find me?”

            “I- what?”

            “Your mother told you my name? How long have you known where I am? How I live?”

            “I- I’ve, I guess a couple of months. It took me a while to introduce myself. Couldn’t find a way to do it. Never really came up with a plan, in the end. Just kinda...”

            “Mmm.”

            Then after a while, “Mr. Aldridge, think we could head up to the shooting range later?”

 

 

            That was two years ago. My wife’s gone now. Left a couple of weeks after Paul. She couldn’t accept the way it worked out. Couldn’t accept it even after I explained and explained that it was God’s will. I had led a sinful life, the product of which was a child. If I had resisted my shameful urges I wouldn’t have set in motion the events leading to the murder of my son. This is where science and spirituality converge; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

            Gael was abandoned as a child and he failed to overcome those circumstances. For that, God may punish him. For now, he is my son, my only son, and as a Christian I must look after him and love him as best I can.