“So you read for a living—help your new friends learn to use their stolen equipment,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“And what else?”
“Nothin’ else.”
What a piss-poor liar he is. Always was. He’s got no conscience. He just isn’t smart enough to tell convincing lies. “Drugs, Keith?” I asked. “Prostitution? Robbery?”
“I said nothing else! You always think you know everything.”
I sighed. “You’re not done causing Dad and Cory pain are you? Not by a long shot.”
He looked as though he wanted to shout back at me or hit me. He might have done one or the other if I hadn’t mentioned Cory.
“I don’t give a shit about him,” he said, his voice low and ugly. He had a man’s voice already. He had everything but a man’s brain. “I do more for her than he does. I bring her money and nice things. And my friends…my friends know she lives here, and they let this place alone. He’s nothing!”
I turned and looked at him and saw my father’s face, lighter-skinned, younger, thinner, but my father’s face, unmistakable. “He’s you,” I whispered. “Every time I look at you, I see him. Every time you look at him, you see yourself.”
“Dogshit!”
I shrugged.
It was a long time before he spoke again. At last he said, “Did he ever hit you?”
“Not for about five years.”
“Why’d he hit you—back then?”
I thought about that, and decided to tell him. He was old enough. “He caught me and Rubin Quintanilla in the bushes together.”
Keith shouted with abrupt laughter. “You and Rubin? Really? You were doing it with him? You’re kidding.”
“We were twelve. What the hell.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get pregnant.”
“I know. Twelve can be a dumb age.”
He looked away. “Bet he didn’t beat you as bad as he beat me!”
“He sent you boys over to play with the Talcotts.” I gave him a glass of cold orange juice and poured one for myself.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“You were nine,” I said. “Nobody was going to tell you what was going on. As I remember, I told you I fell down the back steps.”
He frowned, perhaps remembering. My face had been memorable. Dad hadn’t beaten me as badly as he beat Keith, but I looked worse. He should remember that.
“He ever beat up Mama?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve never seen any sign of it. I don’t think he would. He loves her, you know. He really does.”
“Bastard!”
“He’s our father, and he’s the best man I know.”
“Did you think that when he beat you?”
“No. But later when I figured out how stupid I’d been, I was just glad he was so strict. And back when it happened, I was just glad he didn’t quite kill me.”
He laughed again—twice in just a few minutes, and both times at things I’d said. Maybe he was ready to open up a little now.
“Tell me about the outside,” I said. “How do you live out there?”
He drained the last of his second glass of juice. “I told you. I live real good out there.”
“But how did you live when you first went out—when you went to stay.”
He looked at me and smiled. He smiled like that years ago when he used red ink to trick me into bleeding in empathy with a wound he didn’t have. I remember that particular nasty smile.
“You want to go out yourself, don’t you?” he demanded.
“Someday.”
“What, instead of marrying Curtis and having a bunch of babies?”
“Yeah. Instead of that.”
“I wondered why you were being so nice to me.”
The food smelled just about ready, so I got up and took the bread from the oven and bowls from the cupboard. I was tempted to tell him to dish up his own stew, but I knew he would spoon all the meat out of the stew and leave nothing but potatoes and vegetables for the rest of us. So I served him and myself, covered the pot, left it on the lowest possible fire, and put a towel over the bread.
I let him eat in peace for a while, though I thought the boys would be coming in any time now, starving.
Then I was afraid to wait any longer. “Talk to me, Keith,” I said. “I really want to know. How did you survive when you first went out there.”
His smile this time was less evil. Maybe the food had mellowed him. “Slept in a cardboard box for three days and stole food,” he said. “I don’t know why I kept going back to that box. Could have slept in any old corner. Some kids carry a piece of cardboard to sleep on—so they won’t be right down on the ground, you know.
“Then I got a sleepsack from an old man. It was new, like he never used it. Then I—”
“You stole it?”
He gave me a look of scorn. “What you think I was going to do? I didn’t have no money. Just had that gun—Mama’s .38.”
Yes. He had brought it back to her three visits ago, along with two boxes of ammunition. Of course he never said how he got the ammunition—or how he got his replacement gun—a Heckler & Koch nine millimeter just like Dad’s. He just showed up with things and claimed that if you had the money, you could buy anything outside. He had never admitted how he got the money.
“Okay,” I said. “So you stole a sleepsack. And you kept stealing food? It’s a wonder you didn’t get caught.”
“The old guy had some money. I used it to buy food. Then I started walking toward L.A.”
That old dream of his. For reasons that make sense to him alone, he’s always wanted to go to L.A. Any sane person would be thankful for the twenty miles that separate us from that oozing sore.
“There’s people all over the freeway coming away from LA.,” he said. “There’s even people walking up from way down in San Diego. They don’t know where they’re going. I talked to this guy, he said he was going to Alaska. Goddamn. Alaska!”
“Good luck to him,” I said. “He’s got a lot of guns to face before he gets there.”
“He won’t get there. Alaska must be a thousand miles from here!”
I nodded. “More than that, and with hostile state lines and borders along the way. But good luck to him anyhow. It’s a goal that makes sense.”
“He had twenty-three thousand dollars in his pack.”
I didn’t say anything. I just froze, stared at him in disgust and renewed dislike. But of course. Of course.
“You wanted to know,” he said. “That’s what it’s like outside. If you got a gun, you’re somebody. If you don’t, you’re shit. And a lot of people out there don’t have guns.”
“I thought most of them did—except the ones too poor to be worth robbing.”
“I thought so too. But guns cost a lot. And it’s easier to get one if you already got one, you know?”
“What if that Alaska guy had had one. You’d be dead.”
“I sneaked up on him while he was sleeping. Just sort of followed him until he went off the road to go to sleep. Then I got him. He led me away from L.A., though.”
“You shot him?”
The nasty smile again.
“He talked to you. He was friendly to you. And you shot him.”
“What was I supposed to do? Wait for God to come and give me some money? What was I supposed to do?”
“Come home.”
“Shit.”
“Doesn’t it even bother you that you took someone’s life—you killed a man?”
He seemed to think about that for a while. Then he shook his head. “It don’t bother me,” he said. “I was scared at first, but then…after I did it, I didn’t feel nothing. Nobody saw me do it. I just took his stuff and left him there. Besides, maybe he wasn’t dead. People don’t always die just because you shoot them.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I just wanted his stuff. He was crazy anyway. Alaska!”
I didn’t say any more t
o him, didn’t ask any more questions. He talked a little about meeting some guys and joining up with them, then discovering that even though they were all older than he was, none of them could read or write. He was a help to them. He made their lives pleasanter. Maybe that’s why they didn’t just wait until he was asleep and kill him and take his loot for themselves.
After a while, he noticed that I wasn’t saying anything, and he laughed. “You better marry Curtis and make babies,” he said. “Out there, outside, you wouldn’t last a day. That hyperempathy shit of yours would bring you down even if nobody touched you.”
“You think that,” I said.
“Hey, I saw a guy get both of his eyes gouged out. After that, they set him on fire and watched him run around and scream and burn. You think you could stand to see that?”
“Your new friends did that?” I asked.
“Hell no! Crazies did that. Paints. They shave off all their hair—even their eyebrows—and they paint their skin green or blue or red or yellow. They eat fire and kill rich people.”
“They do what?”
“They take that drug that makes them like to watch fires. Sometimes a camp fire or a trash fire or a house fire. Or sometimes they grab a rich guy and set him on fire.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They’re crazy. I heard some of them used to be rich kids, so I don’t know why they hate rich people so much. That drug is bad, though. Sometimes the paints like the fire so much they get too close to it. Then their friends don’t even help him. They just watch them burn. It’s like… I don’t know, it’s like they were fucking the fire, and like it was the best fuck they ever had.”
“You’ve never tried it?”
“Hell no! I told you. Those guys are crazy. You know, even the girls shave their heads. Damn, they look ugly!”
“They’re mostly kids, then?”
“Yeah. Your age up to maybe twenty. There’s a few old ones, twenty-five, even thirty. I hear most of them don’t live that long though.”
Cory and the boys came in at that moment, Gregory and Bennett excited because their side in soccer had won. Cory was happy and wistful, talking to Marcus about Dorotea Cruz’s new baby girl. Things changed when they all saw Keith, of course, but the evening wasn’t too bad. Keith had presents for the little boys, of course, and money for Cory and nothing for Marcus and me. This time, though, he was a little shamefaced with me.
“Maybe I’ll bring you something next time,” he said.
“No, don’t,” I said, thinking of the Alaska-bound traveler. “It’s all right. I don’t want anything.”
He shrugged and turned to talk to Cory.
MONDAY, JULY 20, 2026
Keith came to see me today just before dark. He found me walking home from the Talcott house where Curtis had been wishing me a very happy birthday. We’ve been very careful, Curtis and I, but from somewhere or other, he’s gotten a supply of condoms. They’re old fashioned, but they work. And there’s an unused darkroom in a corner of the Talcott garage.
Keith scared me out of a very sweet mood. He came from behind two houses without making a sound. He had almost reached me before I realized someone was there and turned to face him.
He raised his hands, smiling, “Brought you a birthday present,” he said. He put something into my left hand. Money.
“Keith, no, give it to Cory.”
“You give it to her. You want her to have it, you give it to her. I gave it to you.”
I walked him to the gate, concerned that one of the watchers might spot him and shoot him. He was that much taller than he had been when he stopped living with us. Dad was home so he wouldn’t come in. I thanked him for the money and told him I would give it to Cory. I wanted him to know that because I didn’t want him to bring me anything else, ever.
He seemed not to mind. He kissed the side of my face said, “Happy birthday,” and went out. He still had Cory’s key, and although Dad knew he had it, he hadn’t had the lock changed again.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2026
Today, my parents had to go downtown to identify the body of my brother Keith.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2026
I haven’t been able to write a word since Wednesday. I don’t know what to write. The body was Keith’s. I never saw it, of course. Dad said he tried to keep Cory from seeing it. The things someone had done to Keith before he died… I don’t want to write about this, but I need to. Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.
Someone had cut and burned away most of my brothers skin. Everywhere except his face. They burned out his eyes, but left the rest of his face intact—like they wanted him to be recognized. They cut and they cauterized and they cut and they cauterized… Some of the wounds were days old. Someone had an endless hatred of my brother.
Dad got us all together and described to us what had been done. He told it in a flat, dead monotone. He wanted to scare us, to scare Marcus, Bennett, and Gregory in particular. He wanted us to understand just how dangerous the outside is.
The police said drug dealers torture people the way Keith was tortured. They torture people who steal from them and people who compete with them. We don’t know whether Keith was doing either of these things. We just know he’s dead. His body was dumped across town from here in front of a burned-out old building that was once a nursing home. It was dumped on the broken concrete and abandoned several hours after Keith died. It could have been dumped in one of the canyons and only the dogs would have found it. But someone wanted it to be found, wanted it to be recognized. Had one of his victims’ relatives or friends managed to get even at last?
The police seemed to think we should know who killed him. I got the feeling from their questions that they would have been happy to arrest Dad or Cory or both of them. But they both lead very public lives, and neither had any unexplained absences or other breaks in routine. Dozens of people could give them alibis. Of course, I said nothing about what Keith had told me he had been doing. What good would that do? He was dead, and in a horrible way. By accident or by intent, all his victims were avenged.
Wardell Parrish felt called upon to tell the police about the big fight Dad and Keith had had last year. He’d heard it, of course. Half the neighborhood had heard it. Family fights are neighborhood theater—and Dad, the minister, after all!
I know Wardell Parrish was the one who told the cops. His youngest niece Tanya let that much slip. “Uncle Ward said he hated to mention it but…”
Oh, I’ll bet he hated to mention it. Damned bastard! But nobody backed him up. The cops went nosing around the neighborhood, but no one else admitted knowing anything about a fight. After all, they knew Dad didn’t kill Keith. And they knew the cops liked to solve cases by “discovering” evidence against whomever they decided must be guilty. Best to give them nothing. They never helped when people called for help. They came later, and more often than not, made a bad situation worse.
We had the service today. Dad asked his friend Reverend Robinson to take care of it. Dad just sat with Cory and the rest of us and looked bent and old. So old.
Cory cried all day, most of the time without making a sound. She’s been crying off and on since Wednesday. Marcus and Dad tried to comfort her. Even I tried, though the way she looked at me…as though I had had something to do with Keith’s death, as though she almost hated me. I keep reaching out to her. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe in time, she’ll be able to forgive me for not being her daughter, for being alive when her son is dead, for being Dad’s daughter by someone else…? I don’t know.
Dad never shed a tear. I’ve never seen him cry in my life. Today, I wish he would. I wish he could.
Curtis Talcott sort of hung around with me today, and we talked and talked. I guess I needed to talk, and Curtis was willing to put up with me.
He said I should cry. He said no matter how bad things had gotten between Keith and me or Keith and the family, I should let myself cry. Odd. Until he brought it up,
I hadn’t thought about my own absence of tears. I hadn’t cried at all. Maybe Cory had noticed. Maybe my dry face was just one more grudge she held against me.
It wasn’t that I was holding back, being stoic. It’s just that I hated Keith at least as much as I loved him. He was my brother—half-brother—but he was also the most sociopathic person I’ve ever been close to. He would have been a monster if he had been allowed to grow up. Maybe he was one already. He never cared what he did. If he wanted to do something and it wouldn’t cause him immediate physical pain, he did it, fuck the earth.
He messed up our family, broke it into something less than a family. Still, I would never have wished him dead. I would never wish anyone dead in that horrible way. I think he was killed by monsters much worse than himself. It’s beyond me how one human being could do that to another. If hyperempathy syndrome were a more common complaint, people couldn’t do such things. They could kill if they had to, and bear the pain of it or be destroyed by it. But if everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain? I’ve never thought of my problem as something that might do some good before, but the way things are, I think it would help. I wish I could give it to people. Failing that, I wish I could find other people who have it, and live among them. A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all.
But as for me crying, if I were going to cry, I think I would have done it back when Dad beat Keith—when the beating was over and Dad saw what he had done, and we all saw how both Keith and Cory looked at him. I knew then that neither of them would ever forgive him. Not ever. That was the end of something precious in the family.
I wish Dad could cry for his son, but I don’t feel any need at all to cry for my brother. May he rest in peace—in his urn, in heaven, wherever.
11
❏ ❏ ❏
Any Change may bear seeds of benefit.
Seek them out.
Any Change may bear seeds of harm.
Beware.
God is infinitely malleable.
God is Change.