After the service was read and Richard had dropped a clump of mud onto the casket’s lid-there wasn’t a dry handful of dirt to be had in all of Valhalla at that moment-the two brothers, two elderly ladies, and two prison guards watched the pastor leave, hurrying over the wet sod, picking and hopping like a water bird trying to scare up lunch.
“I wish we could have had Father Probst,” Ellen said sadly.
Richard groaned softly. Opal hissed, “Ellen!”
Ellen, looking older than she had on the drive out to the cemetery, her nose reddened with the chill, her eyes with crying, grabbed the breast over her heart as if stricken. “Honey, I am so sorry. I just meant… ”
“I know what you meant,” Richard said kindly and tucked her strong, chapped fingers under his arm. “I wish she could have had her priest as well. Mass was a comfort to her. I just wish I could have helped. I knew she didn’t want to move back into that house. Being there preyed on her mind. Jesus.” Tears had come again. Richard dropped Ellen’s hand to fumble under his coat for a handkerchief.
Opal snatched his arm. “There was nothing you could do, honey,” she insisted. “Sara’d been depressed for so long. Since her divorce really and then, well, you know, her son and all. You gave her more happiness than she would ever have had. Don’t you think different. Sara wouldn’t allow it,” she said trying for cheer.
“Sara spoiled me rotten,” Richard admitted. “Whatever I wanted, she let me have.”
“She couldn’t say no to you, could she?” Ellen said, and then she started to cry again.
“I think she was spoiled herself!” Opal said in sudden startling anger. “This was a rotten, selfish thing if you ask me. Doing like that! What did she think it was going to do to her friends? To you? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for letting you find her like she did.”
“Rich?”
Dylan’s voice cut through the outpouring of emotion that was choking Richard. He was glad of an excuse to move away from the women. Opal’s hand pulled out from the crook of his arm, catching and dragging at him like a strangling vine. It was all he could do not to jerk free.
“Bad day, brother,” he said smiling sheepishly at Dylan.
“No shit. Look, I’ve got to go. Sorry. You know I’d stay if I could. Those biddies are liable to feed you to death on casseroles and cake without somebody to back you up.”
“Let my brother come home for a bite,” Richard said winningly to the smartest-looking guard.
“Sorry. The service is all,” the man replied stoutly.
His nose was redder than the fifty-degree temperature and pleasant breeze could account for. This guy liked his booze.
“Come on,” Richard urged. “You and your partner could use a little stiffener, a little something to take off the chill. What do you say? I get the comfort of family; you get a break from routine.” Richard’s smile was a beauty. When it came to dentistry, Sara made sure he spent money on himself.
Rudolf the Red-nosed looked at his cohort. “Whaddyasay?” He could already taste the booze, Richard could tell. The other guard probably had his own addictions but Richard guessed they had nothing to do with drugs and all to do with the boys he “counseled.”
“Just the service. Orders.”
“Come on, man.” Richard tried to put the smile back on. “Just for a few minutes. Nobody has to know. What can it hurt?”
“No can do,” the priggish little man said stiffly.
“Don’t be such a jerk,” Richard snapped and knew he’d pushed too far. Even Rudolf suddenly got a spine.
“That’ll be enough out of you, kid. I’m sorry your aunt or whatever-”
“You morons get your AA degree at community college and a job bullying kids in juvie, and you have the nerve to come to my aunt or whatever’s graveside, my mother’s funeral, for God’s sake-”
“Rich, stop. Be cool. Come on, brother.” Dylan took his arm in both hands, the cuffs making it awkward. He shouldered in between Richard and the guards.
“It’s okay, Rich. Thanks. But they can make it worse back at juvie.” To the guards he said, “Give my brother a break. The guy just lost somebody. Don’t be such pricks. Back off, why don’t you?”
The two men backed off a couple of paces. Rudolph lit a cigarette. “It’s no biggie, Rich. I’m out of there in a couple years anyway. Eigh teen and I go to the big house. What a trip, huh? Come on, brother, you grieve for Sara. I’ll be okay. It’s okay.” Dylan leaned close, his forehead nearly touching Richard’s, his manacled hands still firm around Richard’s arm. “They’re not worth it, Rich. Take it from me. They aren’t worth the sweat.”
Richard breathed in slowly and deeply and tried to blow out some of the ice rime that had formed around his heart. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
Dylan was wearing a cheap suit coat Drummond had given him-or more likely lent all the boys-for formal outings. Richard put his hand on his brother’s wrist, causing the jacket’s sleeve to slide up exposing Dylan’s forearm.
“Tell me this is a joke,” he said, pulling Dylan’s arm out straight, staring at the ink marks on the white flesh.
Dylan said nothing. “Shit,” Richard said. “Why don’t you just have your bros write ‘lowlife ex con’ across your forehead and be done with it? You know what this does? This brands you as a piece of shit. When you get out, everybody will see this and think you’re a scumbag. Shit.”
Richard turned away and stared into the sun, trying to burn out the cold that was coming back into him. “Pumping iron and getting prison tats. You proud of yourself?” he asked without turning back.
“Let it go, Rich. It was stupid. I was high. Let it go.”
“High.”
“Let it go, man.”
There was something in Dylan’s voice that turned Richard around to face him. Dylan felt dangerous.
“Sure,” Richard said. He smiled and clapped Dylan on the shoulder. “Sure.” He walked with his brother and his brother’s keepers to the paddy wagon, an old station wagon tricked out with a screen and bolts in the floor to anchor chains and manacles.
“The big house,” Dylan had said. Richard thought he’d heard a hint of pride or boasting in the words. Like a baseball player in the minor leagues talking about going to “the show.”
Pumping iron and tattoos.
He had to get Dylan out while he was still Dylan, still his brother. If it meant kissing Phil Maris’s well-connected ass, so be it.