Payne paused. “Until we heard the siren.”
Jones felt his stomach drop.
“We’re kids, right? And damn curious about life, so I grab the ball and run toward the noise. Soon another siren can be heard in the distance. And another. And another. We see the flashing lights and think it’s the coolest thing in the world. Something exciting is happening on our block! I’m leading the pack because I’m the fastest runner. The whole time I’ve got the ball under my arm, pretending I’m being chased by the Dallas Cowboys. I’m dodging mailboxes, jumping over curbs, acting like a total idiot. Without a care in the world. Until I saw Chad’s bike in the middle of the street. The damn thing was completely mangled.”
Payne cleared his throat, fighting back his emotions. “I skid to a stop and so do the other guys. There are seven of us, just standing there on the side of the road, growing up in the blink of an eye. None of us knew what to say or do. Finally, one of their parents—I can’t remember whose—ran over to us and made us turn away so we wouldn’t see the cops scrape Chad off the road. Sorry, too late. I had already seen more than I’d wanted to. . . . Lucky me, huh?”
Jones asked, “How did it happen?”
“My best guess is that he raked his yard until it was too dark to rake. After that, he knew we’d still be playing in the park under the lights, so he hopped on his bike and pedaled as fast as he could to join us. Some guy driving a truck didn’t see him, and, well, that was that.”
Payne paused before continuing. “That night, as you can probably imagine, I had trouble sleeping. My parents, who were still alive back then, came into my room in the middle of the night to make sure I was okay, but I wasn’t in there. They looked all over the house, but I was nowhere to be found. So now they start panicking. One kid had already died that night, now they’re worried about me. They call the cops. They call the neighbors. They call everyone they can think of. In less than an hour, a search party was formed and they’re out looking for me. I mean, my parents were freaking out. Totally sick with worry. Finally, after an hour or two, somebody spots me and tells my parents where I am.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“That’s the thing. I wasn’t hiding. I was in Chad’s yard, raking leaves.”
Jones smiled sadly. He had never heard this story before. “Do you remember why?”
Payne nodded. “I felt responsible for Chad’s death. In some ways, I still do. I mean, if I had helped him out with his chores, he’d still be alive today.”
“Jon—”
“I know! It’s completely irrational. But that’s the way I feel. That’s why I went to his yard in the middle of the night—to finish what he’d started. It’s the same reason I went back the next day and the day after that. I raked until that yard was clean. Until it was spotless.”
Payne shook his head and laughed at himself. “How messed up am I?”
Jones knew it was a rhetorical question. Instead of making an easy joke, he asked a question of his own. “What made you think of this? You rarely talk about your childhood.”
“Honestly? This mission reminds me of Chad.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Call me crazy, but if I had answered my damn phone, Richard Byrd would be alive today.”
“Jon—”
“Don’t even start with me,” Payne ordered. The tone of his voice suggested he wasn’t in the mood to argue. “I know it’s nuts, but that’s the way I feel. If I had answered my phone, if I had given him the help that he asked for, he’d still be alive today. . . . Pretty ironic, huh?”
“Ironic?”
“The reason I can’t sleep at night is because of Chad, and my parents, and all the bad shit we saw overseas. So what do I do? I take a sleeping pill to get some rest. Of course, in this case the sleeping pill is the reason I didn’t answer my phone to begin with, so a lot of good it did.”
“Wow,” Jones said, trying to lighten the mood. “You are fucked up.”
“For the record, I said messed up. But thanks for making me feel better about myself.”
“Hey! That’s what friends are for.”
Payne smiled, hoping to change the subject. “Anyway, enough about that crap. Let’s talk about the mission.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No, we were talking about my demons.”
Jones shook his head. “No, we were talking about your motivation. That’s far more important than anything else.”
“How so?”