We Begin at the End

PART ONE

The Outlaw

1

Walk stood at the edge of a feverish crowd, some he’d known since his birth, some since theirs.

Vacationers with cameras, sunburn and easy smiles, not knowing the water was stripping more than timber.

Local news set up, a reporter from KCNR. “Can we get a word, Chief Walker?”

He smiled, shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and looked to thread his way through when the people gasped.

Fragmented noise as the roof caved and crashed to the water below. Piece by piece, the foundation lay crude and skeletal, like the home was no more than a house. It had been the Fairlawn place since Walk could remember, a half acre from the ocean when he was a kid. Taped off a year back, the cliff was eroding, now and then the people from California Wild came and measured and estimated.

The stir of cameras and indecent excitement as slates rained and the front porch clung. Milton, the butcher, dropped to one knee and fired off a money shot as the flagpole leaned and the banner hung in the breeze.

The younger Tallow boy got too close. His mother pulled his collar so hard he tumbled back onto his ass.

Behind, the sun fell with the building, dissecting the water with cuts of orange and purple and shades without name. The reporter got her piece, seeing off a patch of history so slight it barely counted.

Walk glanced around and saw Dickie Darke, who looked on, impassive. He stood like a giant, close to seven feet tall. A man into real estate, he owned several houses in Cape Haven and a club on Cabrillo, the kind of den where iniquity cost ten bucks and a small chunk of virtue.

They stood another hour, Walk’s legs tired as the porch finally gave up. Onlookers resisted the urge to applaud, then turned and made their way back, to barbeque and beer and firepits that waved flame light on Walk’s evening patrol. They drifted across flagstone, a line of gray wall, dry laid but holding strong. Behind was the wishing tree, a major oak so wide splints held its limbs. The old Cape Haven did all it could to remain.

Walk had once climbed that tree with Vincent King, in a time so far from now it would barely count. He rested a shaking hand on his gun, the other on his belt. He wore a tie, his collar stiff, his shoes shined. His acceptance of place was admired by some, pitied by others. Walker, captain of a ship that did not ever leave port.

He caught sight of the girl, moving against the crowd, her brother’s hand in hers as he struggled to match her pace.

Duchess and Robin, the Radley children.

He met them at a half run because he knew all there was to know about them.

The boy was five and cried silent tears, the girl had just turned thirteen and did not ever cry.

“Your mother,” he said, not a question but a statement of such tragic fact the girl did not even nod, just turned and led.

They moved through dusk streets, the lull of picket fences and fairy lights. Above the moon rose, guided and mocked, as it had for thirty years. Past grand houses, glass and steel that fought nature, a vista of such terrible beauty.

Down Genesee, where Walk still lived in his parents’ old house. Onto Ivy Ranch Road, where the Radley home came into view. Peeling shutters, an upturned bike, the wheel lying beside. In Cape Haven a shade beneath perfect might as well have been black.

Walk broke from the children and ran up the path, no lights from inside but the flutter of television. Behind, he saw Robin still crying and Duchess still looking on, hard and unforgiving.

He found Star on the couch, a bottle beside, no pills this time, one shoe on and the other foot bare, small toes, painted nails.

“Star.” He knelt and patted her cheek. “Star, wake up now.” He spoke calmly because the children were at the door, Duchess, an arm on her brother as he leaned so heavy into her, like he no longer held bones in his small body.

He told the girl to dial 911.

“I already have.”

He thumbed open Star’s eyes and saw nothing but white.

“Will she be alright?” The boy’s voice.

Walk glanced over, hoping for sirens, squinting at fired sky.

“Could you go look out for them?”

Duchess read him and took Robin outside.

Star shook then, puked a little and shook, like God or Death had hold of her soul and was wrenching it free. Walk had given it time, three decades had passed since Sissy Radley and Vincent King but still Star slurred about eternalism, the past and the present colliding, the force spinning the future off, never to be righted.

Duchess would ride with her mother. Walk would bring Robin.

She looked on as the medic worked. He did not try a smile and for that she was grateful. He was balding and sweating and maybe tiring of saving those so determined to die.

For a while they stayed in front of the house, the door open to Walk, there like always, his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin needed that, the comfort of an adult, the perception of safety.

Across the street drapes moved as shadows passed silent judgment. And then, at the end of the road, she saw kids from her school, pedaling hard, faces red. News moved so fast in a town where zoning often made front pages.

The two boys stopped near the cruiser and let their bikes fall. The taller, breathless, a sweep of hair plastered down as he walked slow toward the ambulance.

“Is she dead?”

Duchess lifted her chin, met his eye and held it. “Fuck off.”

The engine rumbled as the door swung closed. Smoked glass made matte of the world.

Cars snaked the turns till they tipped from the hill, the Pacific behind, rocks broke the surface like heads of the drowning.

She watched her street till the end, till trees reached over and met on Pensacola, branches like hands, linked in prayer for the girl and her brother, and the unfurling tragedy that had begun long before either was born.

Night met others just like it, each swallowing Duchess so totally she knew she would not see day again, not the way other kids saw it. The hospital was Vancour Hill and Duchess knew it too well. When they took her mother, she stood on the polished floor, light mirrored up, her eye on the door as Walk brought Robin inside. She walked over and took her brother’s hand, then led him toward the elevator where she rode to the second floor. The family room, lights dimmed, she pushed two chairs together. Across was a supply room, and Duchess helped herself to soft blankets and then made the chairs into a cot. Robin stood awkward, the tired dragging him, haunting dark circled his eyes.

“You need to pee?”

A nod.

She led him into the bathroom, waited a few minutes then saw he washed his hands well. She found toothpaste, squeezed a little onto her finger and ran it around his teeth and gums. He spit, she dabbed his mouth.

She helped him out of his shoes and over the arms of the chairs, where he settled like a kind of small animal as she covered him over.

His eyes peered out. “Don’t leave me.”

“Never.”

“Will Mom be okay?”

“Yes.”

She cut the television, the room dark, emergency lighting left them in red, soft enough that he slept by the time she reached the door.

She stood in clinical light, her back to the door; she would not let anyone inside, there was another family room on three. An hour and Walk appeared again and yawned like there was cause. Duchess knew of his days, he drove Cabrillo Highway, those perfect miles from Cape Haven to beyond, each blink a still of such paradise people crossed the country to find them, buy their homes and leave them empty ten months of the year.

“Is he asleep?”

She nodded once.

“I went to check on your mother, she’ll be alright.”

She nodded again.

“You can go and grab something, a soda, there’s a machine next to—”

“I know.”

A look back into the room saw her brother sleeping soundly, he would not move until she stirred him.

Walk held out a dollar bill, she took it reluctantly.

She walked the corridors, bought the soda and didn’t drink it. She would keep it for Robin when he woke. She saw into cubicles, sounds of birth and tears and life. She saw shells of people, so empty she knew they would not recover. Cops led bad men with tattooed arms and bloodied faces. She smelled the drunks, the bleach, the vomit and shit.

She passed a nurse, a smile because most of them had seen her before, just one of those kids dealt a losing hand.

When she returned she found Walk had set two chairs by the door. She checked on her brother then sat.

Walk offered her gum and she shook her head.

She could tell that he wanted to talk, to bullshit about change, a slick on the long road, how it would all be different.

“You didn’t call.”

He watched her.

“Social. You didn’t call.”

“I should.” He said it sad, like he was letting down her or the badge, she did not know which.

“But you won’t.”

“I won’t.”

He had a stomach that strained his tan shirt. The chubby, reddened cheeks of a boy whose indulgent parents never told him no. And a face so open she could not imagine he carried a single secret. Star said he was all good, like that was a thing.

“You should get some sleep.”

They sat like that till stars leaned to first light, the moon forgot its place and held like a smear on new day, a reminder of what had gone. Opposite was a window. Duchess stood at the glass and pressed her head to the trees and the falling wild. Birdsong. A long way and she saw water, specks that were trawlers crawling the waves.

Walk cleared his throat. “Your mother … was there a man—”

“There’s always a man. Whenever anything fucked up happens in the world, there’s always a man.”

“Darke?”

She held straight.

“You can’t tell me?” he asked.

“I’m an outlaw.”

“Right.”

She wore a bow in her hair and fussed with it often. She was too thin, too pale, too beautiful like her mother.

“There’s a baby just been born down there.” Walk changed it up.

“What did they call it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fifty bucks says it’s not Duchess.”

He laughed gently. “Exotic by rarity. You know you were going to be Emily.”

“Sore must be the storm.”

“Right.”

“She still reads that one to Robin.” Duchess sat, crossed her leg, rubbed the muscle, her sneaker loose and worn. “Is this my storm, Walk?”

He sipped coffee, like he was searching for an answer to an impossible question. “I like Duchess.”

“You try it awhile. If I was a boy I might’ve been Sue.” She lay her head back and watched the strips blink. “She wants to die.”

“She doesn’t. You mustn’t think that.”

“I can’t decide if suicide is the most selfish or selfless act.”

At six a nurse led her.

Star lay, a shadow of a person, even less of a mother.

“The Duchess of Cape Haven.” Star, her smile there but weak. “It’s alright.”

Duchess watched her, then Star cried and Duchess crossed the room, pressed her cheek to her mother’s chest and wondered how her heart still beat.

Together they lay in amid the dawn, a fresh day but no light of promise because Duchess knew promise was a falsity.

“I love you. I’m sorry.”

There was much Duchess could say, but for the moment she could find nothing more than “I love you. I know.”

2

At the crest of the hill the land fell away.

Sun climbed cerulean sky as Duchess, riding in the back with her brother beside, took his small hand in hers.

Walk eased the cruiser down their street, pulled up out front of the old house, then followed them in. He tried to fix breakfast but found the cupboards so bare he left them and ran to Rosie’s Diner, then returned with pancakes and smiled as Robin ate three.

After she’d washed Robin’s face and laid out his clothes, Duchess went out front and found Walk sitting on the step. She watched the Cape begin its modest wake, the mailman passed, Brandon Rock from the house beside came out and hosed down his lawn. That they did not give a second look to the cruiser parked outside the Radley home made Duchess sad and glad.

“Can I give you a ride in?”

“No.” She settled beside him and tied her lace.

“I can collect your mom.”

“She said she’d call Darke.”

Duchess did not know the true nature of her mother’s friendship with Chief Walker, though she guessed he wanted to fuck her, like the other men in town.

She looked out at their tired yard. The last summer she’d set about planting with her mother. Robin had brought a small watering can and softened the dirt, his cheeks colored as he made trip after trip. Blue-eyes, Indian mallow, and mountain lilac.

They died of neglect.

“Did she say what it was?” Walk said it gently. “Last night, you know why?”

It was the kind of cruel question she was not used to from him, because, mostly, there wasn’t any kind of reason. But this time she knew why he asked, she knew about Vincent King, about her aunt Sissy who was buried in the cemetery by the edge of the bluff. Everyone knew her grave, behind the sun-bleached picket, with the babies that hadn’t made it, the children cut down by the same god their parents prayed to.

“She didn’t say nothing.”

Behind they heard Robin. Duchess stood and fixed his hair, wiped toothpaste from his cheek with her spit, and then checked his schoolbag, that he had his reading book and journal, his water bottle.

She slid the straps over his shoulders, and he smiled and she smiled back.

They stood side by side and watched the cruiser pare the long street, and then Duchess slipped an arm around her brother and they began to walk.

The neighbor cut the hose and walked over to the edge of his yard, slight limp he tried hard to correct. Brandon Rock. Broad, tan. A stud in one ear, feathered hair, silk robe. Sometimes he benched with the garage door up and metal blaring out.

“Your mother again? Someone should call social services.” Voice like his nose had been broken but never fixed. He carried a dumbbell in one hand and curled it now and then. His right arm noticeably bigger than the left.

Duchess turned to him.

Breeze blew. His robe parted.

She wrinkled her nose. “Flashing a kid. I should call the cops.”

Brandon stared as Robin led her away.

“Did you see Walk’s hands shaking?” Robin said.

“Always worse in the morning.”

“Why?”

She shrugged but knew. Walk and her mother, their shared troubles and the way they dealt with them.

“Did Mom say anything, last night, when I was in my room?” She’d been doing her homework, her project on her family tree, when Robin hammered at the door and said Mom was sick again.

“She had her photos out. The old ones, with Sissy and Grandpa.” Robin had taken to the idea of having a grandpa the first time he’d seen the tall man in their mother’s photographs. That he’d never met him, that Star said next to nothing about him, did not seem to matter. Robin needed people, the cushion of barren names that would keep him from feeling so vulnerable. He longed for cousins and uncles and Sunday football and barbeque, like the other kids in his class.

“Do you know about Vincent King?”

Duchess took his hand as they crossed onto Fisher. “Why, what do you know about him?”

“That he killed Aunt Sissy. Thirty years ago. In the seventies, when men had mustaches and Mom wore her hair funny.”

“Sissy wasn’t our aunt, not really.”

“She was,” he said, simply. “She looked like you and Mom. The same.”

Duchess had got the bones of the story over the years, from Star when she slurred it, from the archives at the library in Salinas. The same library where she’d spent the past spring working on their family tree. She’d traced Radley roots back far, then dropped the book to the floor when she’d made the link to a wanted outlaw named Billy Blue Radley. It was the kind of find she’d been proud of, something more when she stood up front and presented to the class. There was still a whole load of nothing on her father’s side, just the kind of question mark that drew an angry exchange with her mother. Not once but twice Star had been with a stranger, got herself pregnant, left two children with a lifetime of wondering just whose blood pumped their veins. Slut, she’d whispered beneath her breath. It saw her grounded for a month.

“You know he’s coming out of prison today?” Robin kept his tone hushed like it was a grave secret.

“Who told you that?”

“Ricky Tallow.”

Ricky Tallow’s mother worked dispatch at Cape Haven PD.

“What else did Ricky say?”

Robin looked away.

“Robin?”

He folded quick. “That he should’ve fried for it. But then Miss Dolores yelled at him.”

“Should’ve fried. You know what that means?”

“No.”

Duchess took his hand crossing onto Virginia Avenue, the lots a little bigger. The town of Cape Haven tumbled its way toward the water, land value inverse to the hills; Duchess knew her place, their home on the farthest street from the ocean.

They fell in with a group of kids. Duchess heard talk about the Angels and the draft.

When they got to the gate she fussed with his hair once more and made sure his shirt was buttoned right.

Kindergarten stood beside Hilltop Middle. Duchess would spend her break at the fence, looking over at her brother. He’d wave and smile, and she’d eat her sandwich and watch him.

“You be good.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t say nothing about Mom.”

She hugged him, kissed his cheek, and sent him in, watching till Miss Dolores took over. Then she moved on, the sidewalk thick with kids.

Duchess kept her head down as she passed the steps where a group gathered, Nate Dorman and his friends.

Nate, collar flicked up, sleeves rolled over skinny biceps. “Heard your mom got fucked up again.”

Laughter chorused.

She squared to him straight off.

He stared back. “What?”

She met his eye.

“I am the outlaw, Duchess Day Radley, and you are the coward, Nate Dorman.”

“You’re crazy.”

She took a step forward and watched him swallow.

“Talk about my family again and I’ll behead you, motherfucker.”

He tried a laugh but didn’t quite manage it. There were rumors about her; despite the pretty face and slight frame, she could turn, lose it so bad not even his friends would step in.

She pushed past, heard him exhale heavily as she walked on, into school, eyes burning from another tortured night.