Defeated.
There was something I was missing. Something I was too blind to see. Something staring me right in the face.
The eyes.
There was something oddly familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place it.
He had scratched out my eyes.
You have your father’s eyes.
Scratched out my eyes in every single one of the pictures.
It’s the eyes. You guys have the exact same eyes.
Just my eyes, not those of his victims.
I couldn’t help but see the physical similarities between us, the parallels between our lives.
It wasn’t just the eyes. It was my eyes.
His eyes.
I started to run.
THIRTY-THREE
It was full-on dark by the time I slewed from the gravel road and rocketed down Roman’s driveway. His house grew larger and larger in my headlights until I stomped the brakes, skidded sideways to a halt, and leapt from the car. I beat the cloud of dust to the porch, lowered my shoulder just as the front door opened a crack, and barreled right through. Roman hit the floor with a loud thump. The door ricocheted from his feet. I swatted it aside and grabbed him by the shirt before his mind caught up with the situation. I hauled him to his feet, whirled, and slammed him against the wall. Framed pictures fell from the walls down the hallway to my right, shattering on the floor with the impact. I didn’t give a damn. This entire godforsaken house could burn to the ground for all I cared.
I stared directly into Roman’s eyes when he opened them. I stared long and hard. I scrutinized everything from the color of the irises to the shape formed by the lids and the pattern of vessels and the color of the sclera. I watched comprehension dawn on his face, followed quickly by panic, then, finally, resignation. I read all of this while staring directly into eyes that may have been similar to mine, but when it came right down to it, were clearly different than my fathers, than mine. Than Ban’s.
I released Roman’s shirt. He slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor. He looked old in a way he hadn’t before, as though it had been the perpetuation of one lie that had formed the foundation for so many others. And now the whole house of cards was falling down on top of him.
The dust snuck through the front door like an unwelcome guest and settled onto the furniture and the floor. I felt the same heaviness and had to collapse onto the arm of the La-Z-Boy. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally drained.
“What was her name?” I asked in little more than a whisper.
“Carmen,” he said. “Carmen Chona.”
When he looked up at me there were tears in his eyes. The expression on his face spoke of sadness and love, and something I couldn’t quite interpret. Something like failure. Or maybe regret.
“Did you tell him?”
“Who? Ban?” He shook his head and looked past me. The dust that had settled on his hair made him look older still. “Pass me that beer, would you?”
I grabbed the bottle of Coors Light from the table behind me and handed it to him. He nodded his thanks, tipped it back, and drank everything but the foam, which he swirled around at the bottom.
I waited him out.
“He’s a smart kid. He figured it out. But that didn’t change the fact that he was my son.” I nodded. There was a fire in his eyes that gave truth to his words. This was a man who loved his son unconditionally, regardless of the nature of their biological bond. “I think he was maybe fourteen when he figured it out. It was a few more years before he said anything to me, but by then I’m pretty sure he already had all the answers he needed.” He sighed and finished off the foam. “Whatever you may think of me…I’ve always tried to do right by him. I don’t expect you to understand. He’s my son and there’s nothing on this earth that I wouldn’t do for him.”
“Even cover up the murders of so many innocent people?”
Roman turned away. He whispered something that sounded like “None of them was innocent.”
“What happened to his mother?”
“She died when he was three. Hit by a car while walking on the side of the road. Driver was doing fifty. The skid marks didn’t even start until after the point of impact. Bumper, windshield, trunk, road. She was pretty much unidentifiable when I was asked to ID her.”
I gleaned the truth from his face.
“She stepped out in front of the car.”
A wistful smile, but there was no happiness in it. Only pain.
“The driver said he never even had a chance to brake. She just walked right out in front of him. Just driving along and then all of a sudden she was right there. Facing him. Eyes closed. A faint smile on her lips. Then shattered glass and blood. So much blood. Police said the evidence supported his story.”
“And what do you think?”
He stared down into his bottle for a long time before he finally spoke.
“He just left her, you know? Just left her like that. Left me…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rafael. Your father. He just left us both. Up and joined the Air Force and none of us ever heard from him again. Stole off in the middle of the night. Like a coward.”
“My father was no coward.” I could feel the heat rising under my collar, but at the same time, I had seen Ban’s eyes and knew there was truth to the story, if not Roman’s interpretation of it. “He took his responsibilities seriously. He never—never—would have left had he known—”
“That she was pregnant?” Roman stood and walked to the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open and close as I stared blankly at the wall in front of me, now cracked in the shape of the man I had slammed up against it. He handed me a beer before he again sat down on the floor and tipped his back. The bottle was cold in my hand. I just sat there holding it, uncertain exactly what to do with it. I eventually settled on resting it against my aching knuckles. “Of course he didn’t know she was pregnant. And Carmen didn’t tell him. She didn’t want him to abandon his dream and return to her out of some misguided sense of duty. She wanted him to come back because of her.”
“Why didn’t she go with him? You said they were going to get married.”
He stared at me with a genuine expression of confusion.
“You still don’t get it, do you? This isn’t just some housing development out here, some suburb misplaced in the desert. This is our home. Our parents lived here, and theirs before them, going back countless generations. There are traditions to uphold, beliefs that need to be passed on so they aren’t forgotten. The world out there?” He made a wide sweeping gesture with his arm. “It has no i:bdag. No heart. It is a world devoted to greed and ambition and the usurpation of the individual. It is a giant bee hive where the drones don’t even seem to recognize the fact that they’re building a giant hive for a ruling class that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them, all while destroying the traditions of the land—the very land itself—in the process. Of course she didn’t leave. Regardless of whatever plans she and Raffi might have made, when it came time to actually do it, there was no way she could. Not for her child. Not for her heart. And in the end, not even for her life.”
“But you were here for her.”
He chuckled, but there was no humor in it.
“Yeah…I was here.” He drew a long swill that emptied half the bottle. “I think she loved me, too. In her own way. I wasn’t Raffi. But I was here. And I loved her. With all of my heart. I loved her. Maybe a part of it was because I initially felt obligated to do what my brother didn’t. To right his wrong. Maybe at first, anyway. But it wasn’t long before there were genuine feelings. I loved her and I loved her child. My child. Ban. My little coyote.”