“He’s alive,” Caitlin says. “We need a cell phone.”
“Don’t call no ambulance,” says Johnston. “We’re too far from the hospital. I ain’t gon’ make it. Just let me breathe this sweet air.”
Despite his request, Caitlin digs in the man’s pocket but finds only a walkie-talkie. She presses the transmission button and starts to speak, but I gently pull the radio from her hand. She stares at me with what seems like anger, but slowly her face softens into resignation. Below us, the ashy face and bloodshot eyes look up at the stars, seeing something I can’t begin to guess at.
“Don’t you want to live?” Caitlin whispers. “You can tell the world the truth about what happened all those years ago.”
Sleepy Johnston shakes his head. “That’s your job now. At least that old bastard’s gone. That’s enough for me.”
“You saved our lives, Mr. Johnston. You’re a hero.”
“No. I was Pooky’s friend … that’s all. Just one of Albert’s boys. That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Caitlin shakes her head, then wipes her eyes and begins to sob.
“Why did you call yourself Gates Brown?” I ask, leaning over him.
The gray mouth splits into a smile. “Gates was my man when I got to Detroit … that brother won the Series in sixty-eight. Tigers recruited him right out of reform school … helped him make good, just like Albert had done.” Two long, rasping breaths stop his speech. “You tell this story, miss,” he whispers, his eyes on Caitlin. “Just like Henry would have. Tell people what that Royal done … what people let him do.”
“I will,” she promises.
“He ain’t the last, you know.”
“We know,” I tell him. “Take it easy, man.”
“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “It took me so long … to find the guts to come back.”
He lifts his hand as though searching for a familiar grasp. Caitlin takes hold of it and presses the hand to her breast.
“Thank you for what you did. We’ll never forget you.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shakes her head helplessly.
Johnston, too, has closed his eyes. Caitlin leans over him, her ear against his mouth. I lay my hand on her back and rub softly.
When she rises, tears streak her face, and her mascara has bled into a bandit mask. “Jesus,” she says. “All of this out of some black kid liking a white girl?”
“That’s right. Just like Dad and Viola. We’re tribes, just like we were ten thousand years ago.”
She shakes her head as though to negate reality. “Nothing’s changed?”
“Sure it has. In the law. In people’s hearts? Maybe. In the blood …? No.”
Caitlin gets to her feet and staggers away, obviously distraught.
I get up and follow. After leaving her in peace for a few yards, I come alongside her.
“Did you see Henry?” she asks, her voice slightly hysterical. “He was like a monk immolating himself in the street. He did that to save me.”
“He did. And to stop Brody. He did it for everyone he couldn’t save before tonight.”
She shakes her head with violent intensity. “I feel sick. I don’t know how to process that.”
“That’s who Henry was. He probably would have been useless in a combat platoon, until someone threw a hand grenade into a foxhole. Henry was the guy who’d jump on a grenade to save his buddies.”
Caitlin stops and turns back toward the lake house. Flames have reached the first floor, and smoke is gathering under the eaves. “What happened tonight? What am I supposed to write tomorrow? Everybody’s dead. I mean … what was the point?”
For a long moment I remain silent. “I don’t know, but I think maybe I finally understand why my father couldn’t tell me about the war.”
Caitlin gingerly touches the puckered burn on her face. “I wanted this story so bad. Now I’m in it. We are the story. And I have no idea what to say about it.”
“The things Brody and the Knoxes did … that pain echoes through a lot of years. Generations. That’s what kept Henry going, and what brought Sleepy Johnston back here. This is the end of Brody’s thread, that’s all. Albert’s and Pooky’s, too. It’s justice of a kind, I guess.”
“No one will understand this. I don’t, and I was here.”
“Because it’s not over. Forrest and the Double Eagles are still out there. And Henry’s work is truly yours now. Just write the story up to this point. That’s all you can do. The meaning comes later, if at all.”