The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

The candle ceremony was early, eight o’clock Saturday morning. Sam confirmed the Zoom was good on batteries, then slipped away without waking Joss to find a seat in the courtyard.

  The grass was matted from all the foot traffic of the last days. A few stray forks and red cups had eluded the cleanup crew, dotting the shrubs.

  Sam felt good, having run yesterday and mostly skipped the bar station last night. She’d been too busy, splitting her time between catching up and recording documentary clips. She’d found two more witnesses to the aquarium story, including one who said Rock had promised to “put Derek through a frickin’ wall” when they got back to their dorm. A third said she’d seen Rock and Derek so drunk that night they’d wandered into traffic arm in arm and nearly been hit by passing cars. It wasn’t clear if this had happened before or after the aquarium, but either way, it was solid footage.

  The catching up had been successful, too. With everyone arrived now, the reunion had a far-flung festival vibe. Every time she turned around, Sam was discovering a forgotten pal or reliving some seminal moment.

  She had learned that Naomi Burroughs had gotten divorced. She’d cooed and given Naomi a long hug, but been surprised by how happy she seemed. Naomi talked about how she and her husband had adapted to passing in the halls without a word, how the pattern of stifling indifference had held for years until the affair broke it open—and she’d told all this smiling. Because, as she said, it was “over. Finally.”

  Sam had come right to the brink of divulging her own situation…then stopped.

  What if Joss had ambled up?

  Now Sam pulled a chair over to a group of friends sitting quietly, waiting for the ceremony to start.

  “Hi!” she whispered, and they waved or mouthed back likewise.

  Fifteen candles were arranged on a linen-covered table. Behind each stood a photograph and cream card identifying the deceased classmate. A microphone sat unattended on the table. A woman Sam recognized as a ninety-sixer stood nearby with her hands folded solemnly.

  Sam took the Zoom from her purse and set it on the next chair.

  At the stroke of eight, the woman leading the ceremony lit all fifteen candles from a taper. Blowing out the taper, she turned to those gathered—between thirty and forty, grouped in bunches like Sam’s Davenport crew—and gave a subdued smile.

  “Thanks for coming to honor our classmates, these friends who were taken too soon.”

  She briefly acknowledged those who’d played a role in coordinating and read the name on the first card. Penelope Gutierrez had rowed and majored in chemistry.

  “Would anyone like to say a word about Penelope?”

  A woman in slacks strode to the table and described Penelope as kind, shy at praise, and committed to her family in Oregon, where she’d returned to teach and coach softball after Yale. Her death on vacation in Peru had shaken their circle of friends.

  Other speakers cracked jokes, sobbed, and gave information for memorial funds. Twice, there was a sort of race between friends to speak about their classmate, a meeting at the microphone, then a falling over one another to say the other had known him or her best.

  Once, nobody answered the call. Sam’s heart crunched as the organizer scanned the crowd in vain on Todd Nixon’s behalf.

  The fifth candle was for Derek Dickerson, Rock Pruitt’s freshman roommate. As a man with a puffy pink neck stood, Sam pressed record on the Zoom.

  “Honestly? This sucks,” the puffy man began. “Derek should be here. He should be here this weekend, lighting it up with me, with Nicky. With our whole pledge class.”

  From behind his back, the man produced a frosted bottle of vodka and two glasses. He fumbled placing one before Derek’s photo—his bloodshot eyes made Sam feel good about her own restraint last night—then poured each full.

  “To you, Dicks. Think about you every day. I, uh…and even though he’s not here”—the speaker glanced around the courtyard—“believe me, he’s drinking for you, too.”

  The puffy man downed one shot, then, after feinting like he might dump it on the lawn, smirked and downed the second.

  A buzz passed through the courtyard at this clumsy—but unmistakable—reference to Rock Pruitt.

  Sam shifted the Zoom to clear its mic path, to ensure it caught the full eulogy. Naturally, it was all glory and praise. How generous Derek had been at the keg tap, what a loyal shoulder to cry on he’d been after the speaker’s high school girlfriend had dumped him over the phone.

  The truth poked through, barely disguised. When the speaker mentioned Dickerson’s being “popular with the fairer sex, one might say,” Sam tasted bile in her throat.

  The rumors about Derek Dickerson had been grotesque. He would troll early-morning parties for women, recklessly drunk five nights out of seven, sidling up to women on frat-house couches and starting neck massages unasked. He played no sports at Yale but swung his preppy, chestnut hair and chuck-roast shoulders around with an athlete’s swagger.

  It came out later that in Dickerson’s brief time on campus, just six months, he’d amassed no less than eight sexual misconduct complaints. They had been bubbling up through various disciplinary panels at the time of his death.

  This was partly what Sam found so intriguing about the incident. About his death. It wasn’t some down-the-middle tragedy like Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne. Derek Dickerson’s accidental death had the dual impact of stopping a serial rapist, and the career of Rock Pruitt—which even in the early days, everyone around understood was burgeoning. Rock had bulled his way to Congress anyhow, but who knew how high he might’ve risen with a clean past?

  The DKE brother finished his macho ode and sat back down to grave fist bumps from his friends. Sam switched off the Zoom.

  It occurred to her she would need the puffy man’s consent to use his audio. Really, she should interview him. The thought repulsed her—with no husband around, he’d be all joshing and hitting on her.

  Other classmates had died of disease, overdose, one trying to save his parents’ dog down an abandoned well. Sam cried for people she’d never met and felt chastened by the smallness of her own problems.

  Stacked up against these hardships, a failed marriage was nothing. A flat tire on the way to work. She had health and decades of life ahead, and resolved to kick herself in the butt next time she felt self-pity.

  The third-to-last candle was for Jamie Gallagher. His picture, which Sam had pried out of a collage frame in her apartment, showed a nineteen-year-old boy with preternaturally light eyes, surprise blooming in his face. They’d just returned from watching Yale women’s hockey to find an Equality for All: We Did It! banner stretched across the courtyard: a celebration of the landmark anti-discrimination bill his mother had spearheaded through the Senate.

  He looked so, so young—the corners of his mouth loose, one arm unfurling toward the frame’s edge with spiraling ease.

  Nobody had seen Jamie much after college, even before Puntland, so in a way, he’d been fixed in all their minds. Earnest. Idealistic. Troubled. Forever dissatisfied with himself and the world.

  Sam had chosen this picture precisely to combat that conception of Jamie. Because Jamie hadn’t always been that way—not as a freshman, and not in those lovely moments when he’d forgotten himself with her.

  When the woman directing the ceremony asked who would speak for Jamie, Sam found her legs carrying her forward. She bumped the Zoom, and it clattered to the ground. She didn’t pick it up.

  “Hello, I’m Sam,” she began. “Jamie and I shared a bathroom senior year, and believe it or not, we were still friends by the end.” Chuckles relaxed her. “I wanted to say a bit about Jamie. Not Jamie Gallagher, but just Jamie—the person we all knew in Davenport, lugging his rucksack into the dining hall or sitting waiting for a laundry machine to free up.

  “Jamie came to Yale with a lot on his shoulders. He took that burden seriously—the service part—but individual people were what fired him up. If he saw you struggling w
ith a problem set, or getting a sofa upstairs? He always helped. He had to. It was his passion, making things easier for others to bear.”

  As Sam continued giving examples, Laurel and others nodded along and dabbed their cheeks. Sam cringed at the inadequacy of words, though. Words couldn’t capture Jamie. The two of them had even talked about this—how malleable language was, how easily you could deceive with it, bend it to your own purpose.

  What else can I do? she thought. Stomp? Jump up and down?

  Across the quad, Joss emerged from their entryway. She held coffee two-handed at her chin.

  Sam continued, “The feud—or vendetta, whatever people call it now—was hard on Jamie. He…it got in the way of what he wanted.” To quell a weakness in her jaw, she summoned anger. “Because just look at our class, right? You basically took two promising people—Jamie and Rock Pruitt, who I’m told people think has merits—and made them into these barely human figures, doing insane things. The rest of us are dealing with in-laws and exams, and they’re stuck in some otherworldly mortal combat. I guess it’s fun for us. I guess we like watching.”

  Sam petered out. She stood before the crowd feeling hot, drained, and a little embarrassed. She hadn’t meant to speak ill of Rock or sermonize with some blanket social critique.

  Leaning on her film training, she decided to come back to the personal—to focus her audience on what mattered.

  “Jamie only took time out for himself to do one thing: mountain biking.” She smiled, thinking of those forearms streaked with road rash. “Otherwise, he was one hundred percent about helping others. Just look how he died—sacrificing his own life to end atrocities. That was Jamie to the core.

  “He was kind, and maybe naive, and I wish he’d been born to schoolteachers in the middle of Ohio or someplace. I wish he could’ve just been that kid whose Frisbee hit me our first day of school, and that’s it.”

  Joss took one step out of the entryway. When a head turned her way, she stopped. Probably the head’s owner—some guy sitting at the ceremony in jeans—was just shifting to get comfortable or stretch his back, but she felt awkward.

  Which seat should I take? Mom’s?

  What if she sees me and it messes up her speech?

  Joss stepped back into the entryway, deciding not to decide.

  She had been awake for an hour. For half of that, she’d lain in bed—hearing Mom and Laurel leave for the memorial, knowing they were trying to sneak out without waking her up.

  Maybe Mom didn’t want her around so much death talk. Maybe they worried it would drag her down, or they just wanted to think about the friend they’d lost without her around to distract.

  Whatever. When she’d been sure they were gone, Joss had wandered into the common room and watched from the window, nibbling the stale granola Mom had packed.

  She hadn’t decided what to think about Yale. Campus was amazing—the architecture, all the stone statues. The people, too. The students didn’t seem like vapid, binge-drinking characters from movies. Just walking along the sidewalk, she’d overheard debates about colonialism and casual discussions of dialectical materialism.

  Which was cool, but kinda weird.

  Also weird? How perfectly Mom fit into the scene.

  Now, standing at the table of white candles, she looked ten feet tall. She made these firm, commanding gestures. She spoke with conviction. Joss had heard her speak well at WNYC events, but this was a totally different level.

  Joss tried another step away from the entryway, drawn to her mother’s confidence. It felt like she was watching a TED talk. She’d known she had an awesome mom—friends who visited Joss in Brooklyn loved hanging with her—but seeing her with her college friends showed Joss more. She realized Mom had been a standout here: the center of her scene, liked by everybody.

  This didn’t exactly surprise Joss. It was just…well, again, weird. She was used to seeing Mom arguing with Dad about toilet repair or “some realistic assumptions about how we’re going to pay for college.”

  Mom talked about Jamie Gallagher for five minutes. Stories, wishes, her opinions about the feud. Did she write this out ahead of time?

  It didn’t feel like it. It felt spontaneous. Although the subject obviously made her sad, energy radiated from her face. She had things to say about Jamie, and she was going to say them—and they were going to be heard.

  When his name had come up at home, Mom had always downplayed their friendship, probably because of Dad’s jealous jokes about “your princely classmate.” Hearing Mom now, though, Joss felt the full significance of the friendship—and wondered if it might’ve been something more at college.

  Joss was so captivated by her mother that it took her several moments to hear the murmurs.

  Laurel, sitting in the back row, stood and squinted.

  Somebody else was pointing to the gate, whisper-shouting to all around.

  “Hey, look!”

  “What? No, that—there’s no way…”

  Peeling her eyes off Mom, Joss turned to see what people were staring at.

  Laurel cried, “Oh my God!”

  The man was lanky, and approached the ceremony on freaky-thin legs that boosted him up at the end of each stride—a sorta quick, hopeful walk. He had a beard. Blond, flowy hair trailed back from his face like streamers off a kid’s bike handles. Joss was twenty yards away but still noticed his cracked, weathered skin—which could’ve been the same material as that rucksack he was carrying.

  The courtyard was going crazy. People rushed forward to hug him or slap his back. A woman held up her cellphone to snap a pic.

  Joss forgot her own anxieties and started for the candle table, where Mom stood holding the microphone—the only person in the courtyard who hadn’t moved.

  The tall flats of her face were frozen, but her eyes and mouth were swirling—three perfect circles of shock.

  Joss instinctively went to her, feeling like she might need an arm or hand to steady herself with. But she didn’t.

  Mom’s mouth kept its circle shape for one second, for two. Then turned into a giant smile.

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Jamie Gallagher had come a long way to see Samantha Lessing. From the bustling streets of Juba, by van over rutted roads through the Ethiopian countryside, waiting twelve hours at Addis Ababa for the flight to Khartoum—herds of bushbucks grazing outside the airport’s plate glass—and finally the overnight flight to JFK. He’d had plenty of downtime to think and embellish a mental image of Sam.

  He had teased every small charm forward, the playful chin and full lips, that expressive brow whose crimps and angles used to send his emotions six ways at once. Reality might’ve easily fallen short of this idealized version—which, after all, benefited from two decades of yearning and glorified memory.

  But it didn’t.

  Sam was everything he’d dreamed. Standing on tiptoes, he peered over his buzzing classmates and saw a revelation in jeans and a black blazer. Her eyes bright and curious. Her head tipped to one side, just barely—questions and concern and (maybe?) a flirt all at once.

  When the person beside her—is that Laurel Trowbridge?—staggered over a chair, Sam caught her arm to stop the fall—an effortless, instinctive good—then resumed looking.

  Everyone was looking. Jamie knew this feeling well from stepping off trains at African stations unaccustomed to Westerners. People were hugging him. Cheering him. Smacking him on the back, jostling his rucksack. He hugged back and mumbled answers to shouted questions, using a kind of second-level consciousness while keeping his main focus on Sam.

  And now he was drifting farther into the courtyard…and Sam was drifting nearer…and they were coming together as though totally alone, like one magnet to its mate.

  She said, “How?”

  Jamie shook his head, not now, and they embraced. Her body filled every hollow of his. The second thoughts he’d been having—saying farewell to his Juban friends, bouncing in the back of a rickety
van—all winked out.

  His eyes stayed closed a long while. When he felt her face pulling away from his shoulder, he sensed her apprehension and quickly drew back.

  A teenage girl stood watching them—tall, inky-haired. She had to be Sam’s daughter.

  Jamie waved at the girl. Her face didn’t change.

  To the broader courtyard, he said, “Well, this is over the top—sorry. I literally got back on U.S. soil this morning, and then the train from JFK was delayed…”

  He glanced at the table of candles and saw that two remained. When he’d approached the Silliman gate and heard what was going on, he’d paused, not wanting to interrupt a speech memorializing another classmate. Then Sam had stepped forward to discuss him, and he’d felt compelled to show himself.

  Now he gestured to the last candles. “Perhaps we could all sit again? I think we should honor the rest of our fallen classmates. The ones who actually fell.”

  His quip pierced the unreality of the situation, and now everyone did return to their chairs. The murmurs never died out entirely, but things quieted enough for the memorial to resume.

  Jamie found a place in back. Sam sat beside the teenage girl—definitely her daughter, the eye shapes were identical—in a small group of Davenporters.

  He focused on the last two classmates, listening to their friends tell about favorite poems and remembered kindnesses. Though he hadn’t known either, Jamie tried to inhabit their lives, to shed his own skin and imagine choices he might’ve made—which fates could have changed, which would’ve been inevitable.

  Jamie’s father used to remind him when Jamie got angry with Republicans, Pruitt or otherwise, “Their experiences are different from yours. If you haven’t grieved their sorrows or cheered their triumphs, you have no right to judge.”

  Jamie’s mother used to roll her eyes.

  After the ceremony, Jamie’s classmates mobbed him again. He’d had the morning of travel to reorient to the Western way of relating—quick, without the silences he had come to appreciate in Africa—but still found conversations disorienting.