The Long Fall

Katrina’s blue eyes, at that moment, were omniscient as far as Leonid Trotter McGill was concerned. She saw my every thought and hesitation. I lost the count of my breathing and she held me with that gaze.

“I will still be here trying to make it work,” she said.

After a moment more of this special torture, my wife of decades made her way from the room.

Ê€„

43

A sober-minded Katrina apologized to Twill and

Mardi. She told them that she’d had a hard day and was getting too upset over little things.

“You are welcome to stay for a day or so,” she said to the girl.

Shelly was so happy that she kissed her new friend on the cheek.

“Can she stay in my room, Mama?”

“Of course.”

Twill was looking at me but I managed to keep my eyes on Katrina.

Later on, after the dishes were done, I told Twill about Katrina wanting me to bunk with him.

“Why’d you get on her like that, Pops?” was his reply.

“Because when you looked in my eye I saw that there was something wrong,” I said. “I knew that you had a good reason for bringing Mardi here and so I talked your mother into it.”

For a moment Twill’s eyes tightened, but then he broke into a smile.

“You all right, Mr. McGill.”

I don’t think I will ever receive higher praise.

LATER ON I went down to Twill’s room. He was sitting at his desk, dressed only in dark-blue boxers while surfing the Net for arcane bits of information. When I walked in he signed off and stood up. There was a sleeping bag on the floor at the foot of his queen-sized bed.Þ€…

“I got the floor,” he said.

The sleeping bag was state-of-the-art. The top was dull-green nylon stuffed with goose down, and the bottom was a cushion of a slightly darker hue. There was even a two-ply netting for the face, to keep out mosquitoes while allowing the sleeper to breathe comfortably.

I had given up asking Twill where he got things like that or what he used them for. When he was younger I tried reasoning with him. From the age of five he’d countered my efforts with that winning smile, along with his patented perplexed stare. As the years progressed I tried rewards, punishments, even a child psychiatrist. The presents he shared with his siblings. The punishments he bore without tears or anger. It’s anyone’s guess what the therapist thought. She was an honest woman named Powell; after seventeen sessions she called it quits.

Nothing could deter Twill from the trouble he was drawn to. But he had a cockeyed code of honor, too. Even as a child he never stole from or hurt family or friends. After the age of eleven, when he’d gained a measure of mobility, this truce spread out to include our neighbors. Smiles and schemes came to him as naturally as breath. I couldn’t stop him from being what he was. My only job was to keep him alive and free long enough to become a man.

“SO?” I SAID a few minutes after we were both in our beddings and the lights were out.

It was a very comfortable bed. The thread count of Twill’s bright-yellow sheets was at least twelve hundred.

“So what, Dad?”

“What kind of trouble are you in, son?”

“It’s not like that, Pop,” he said softly. “Mardi and me just friends. She needed to get away, and I knew Shell would be good to her. There’s no problem.”

“You’re wrong about that, Twill,” I said. “The problem is that among your peers you are the best, by far. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there that are better than you. What I’m saying is that you’ve got to rely on somebody, sometime.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” his voice came from out of the darkness, dripping with innocence.

“Tell me why you feel that you have to protect Mardi.”

“I’m just doin’ her a favor, Pops. That’s all.”

I hadn’t expected him to tell me anything. This charade of a conversation was designed to get him to believe that I was suspicious about the girl so that later on, when I took action, he wouldn’t suspect that I had his primary e-mail address tapped.

THERE WAS FIRE all around me. My clothes were smoldering and I could hardly catch a breath because I was running hardã€s runnin and inhaling smoke. I ran down a long metal corridor until coming to a huge iron door. I took off my burning jacket, wrapped my hands with it, and tried to turn the knob . . . but it wouldn’t give. I slammed into the door with my shoulder but it was locked. I turned to see which other way I could run but Timothy Moore was standing there, blocking the way. He was holding a long-barreled pistol, pointing it at my forehead.

In that moment, time came to a complete stop. I was looking into the killer’s dark eyes for an answer.

Why did you make me sign over the money? Why do you want me dead? I wanted to ask, but the act of bringing the questions to my lips started time moving again, and then he fired.

I sat up in the posh bedding, gasping for air. My heart was beating like a pneumatic hammer. It took more than a minute for me to catch my breath.