He Started It

Eddie did not waver. ‘That’s not what you said.’

‘Eddie,’ Grandpa said, taking a step closer to him. Closer to that gun. ‘This guy is just a hired investigator. He doesn’t care who Nikki is, let alone where she ran off to. He’s doesn’t care if the police are called or not.’

I didn’t move. Couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t turn away from the scene in front of me, which felt more like a movie than real life.

Except the only one with a gun was my brother.

‘Lie,’ he said to Calvin, who now had both his hands up and they were both empty. ‘You’re going to call them. You’re going to turn Grandpa in.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘They’re going to lock him up and look for Nikki.’

‘Hey,’ Calvin said. ‘I promise you I won’t –’

Eddie pulled the trigger.

Not once. Three times.

This, apparently, is what we do in our family when we feel threatened. We get violent. Or at least some of us do.

We’re back in the same place, and we’re all staring at that sandy hill. I try to imagine what’s left of that Honda. It was just a hunk of metal when we left it.

But I can still feel the heat of the fire.

Eddie gets out of the car first, claps his hands together. ‘This is it.’

We all stand in the clearing, looking up at the bunny ears. This should be our selfie, right here, out in the middle of nowhere. Eddie in his polo shirt and khakis, his Top-Siders so worn out they’re embarrassing. Portia in her short shorts and child-sized shirt, her black hair knotted up into a mess. Me in my khakis, tank top, and baseball cap. Felix’s baseball cap.

‘Seems smaller now,’ Portia says.

Indeed.

Eddie walks away from us and toward the rabbit rocks. He gets right up close to them and stands in the open space between the ears. He kneels down.

‘What are you …’ I stop because I can see what he’s doing.

Portia turns around and watches him for a second. ‘Why are you digging?’ she says.

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t look up. I have no idea what he’s looking for or why he is digging. He’s using his hands, pulling up the dirt like someone’s buried alive.

The only thing I remember burying is Calvin’s car, with Calvin’s body burned up inside of it. We all pitched in, heaving dirt on it to stop the fire and the smoke. That’s what Grandpa was worried about – the smoke. He didn’t want anyone to find us before we were done.

Eddie keeps digging, using his hands the way a child does at the beach. Finally, he hits something. There’s a crinkling sound as he brushes away the dirt and lifts it out.

A plastic bag. The kind you used to get at every grocery store and drugstore before they started getting banned.

‘What the hell,’ Portia says.

Eddie continues to ignore us as he rips open the bag and pulls out what’s inside.

It’s my old T-shirt, the one I used to wrap up those ashtrays from the motel rooms. The one Nikki took when she ran. Only now the shirt has blood on it. Old, dried blood, a deep brownish-red color.

Eddie unwraps the shirt and I hear the clink of the glass as the ashtrays shift. He pulls out one last thing.

The other disposable camera.

‘Are you kidding me?’ Portia says.

Eddie looks like a kid on Christmas morning. ‘I wasn’t sure these would burn in the fire,’ he says, pointing to the ashtrays. ‘So I buried it all instead.’

‘Whose blood is that?’ I say.

He ignores me and looks only at the camera, inspecting it from every angle. For twenty years, it’s been protected from the sun, water, and dirt. It looks brand new.

‘You know there’s no pictures on it, right?’ Portia says. ‘Nikki never took any pictures of me.’

‘That doesn’t mean there aren’t any pictures on it,’ Eddie says.

My eyes keep shifting back and forth, from the camera to the bloody shirt.

Nikki took a few pictures with that camera, but not of Portia. They were nothing important, just trees and street signs and our weird motels. Just so the camera had been used, so Grandpa believed the story. They were nothing worth burying, let alone preserving.

‘I’ve been waiting twenty years to get ahold of this,’ Eddie says. ‘I swear, I’ve had nightmares about someone finding this.’

‘If that’s true,’ Portia says. ‘Why didn’t you just come out here and get it?’

He doesn’t answer. A list of options runs through my mind, like I’m playing a mental game of Risk and I have a secret mission to choose the most likely course of action. I think about the drive and all the directions I gave him. All the times he said I got it.

‘You didn’t know how to get here,’ I say. ‘You just pretended.’

Eddie smiles. ‘Thanks for leading the way. Grandpa and I both came out here so many times, but we just couldn’t find it.’

‘Grandpa?’ I say.

‘Hell yes, Grandpa. You think Grandpa planned this second trip all on his own?’ He scoffs. ‘Who do you think planted the idea in his head?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Portia says, spitting the words out.

Of course Eddie was in on it. He always knew this trip was coming. How did I not see that? How did I not figure it out? That’s what happens when you aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

‘It was the animal that tripped me up,’ Eddie says, pointing up to the bunny-ear rocks. He laughs. ‘We kept looking for coyote ears. Passed right by these big rabbit ears at least a dozen times.’

That’s how natural these dirt hills look against all these rocks. No wonder the burnt-up car is still here, still untouched.

Eddie has been on a secret mission all this time; I just missed it entirely. We’re all haunted by something, and for Eddie it was old ashtrays, a camera, and that bloody shirt.

‘Whose blood is that?’ I say again.

He stares at that T-shirt, shaking his head at it. ‘Here’s your Nikki,’ he says, nodding to it. ‘She’s been out here this whole time.’ He wraps everything back up, walks to the car, and puts it in the back. The box of ashes is waiting.

I turn to Portia, who looks as confused as I do. ‘I have no idea what’s happening here,’ she says.

‘I found her,’ Eddie says. ‘She ran into the woods and I found her.’

He turns around, but he isn’t holding the wooden box. Eddie is holding the gun.

In a split second, I decide my best strategy is to ignore the gun and pretend he doesn’t have it. Or maybe I’m too preoccupied by what he just said.

‘What do you mean, you found her?’ I say.

He leans against the bumper of the car like he’s settling in to tell a long story. ‘When I ran into the woods that morning, I found her. Well, actually she found me.’

‘What the –’

‘She attacked me,’ he says. ‘Nikki came out from behind a tree and swung those fucking ashtrays at me.’

I shook my head. This wasn’t right, couldn’t be right. ‘You said you didn’t find her.’