14. Penance
Chapter 14
Penance
Taz
Was I a coward for running away again? Maybe.
I needed to get away from him and the crushing oppression of his presence. He was like an inferno that sucked the air out of a room. I loved fire, but I wasn’t in the habit of getting burned.
I loved explosives, but I wasn’t going to be in the blast area.
There was only one place that Kai Griffith wouldn’t go.
God help me if he did track me here like he said he would.
I rolled my motorcycle off the dirt road, towards the large red barn. It had changed a lot since the first time I had seen it. The building that had been a little tilted was now upright. A broken, white-framed window had been repaired, and a glass pane put in the place of the wooden board. The big barn door that had been half-destroyed with rot was replaced with a perfect red door with a white diagonal cross.
I killed the engine just as Greg “VD” Veder came out with two long bits of lumber on his shoulder.
He took one look at me and dumped the wood on the dirt-swept ground outside of the barn. He pulled off his tanned leather gloves, and without a greeting said, “Wanna light things on fire?”
The man knew how to speak to women, I’d give him that.
“I’m always up for a fire.” I felt the lighter in my jeans pocket through the denim.
I put the kickstand down and dismounted, putting my helmet in the backbox.
“You're not going to see Charlotte and Top first?” He turned and went back inside the building, presumably to pull out more scraps. “There’s paper in the box by the door.”
With my boot, I broke the lumber into small bits, and they fell apart easily under my foot.
“Nope,” I called after his retreating back.
He came back with more lumber, dumping it beside me.
“Griff is here,” I said, in lieu of an explanation.
Veder paused his stride but recovered quickly. “Is that right?”
He casually continued the task at hand, and when there was no lumber left in the barn, he started going to the nearby woodline, picking up dead branches along the way.
I piled the things small enough to be kindling, then stacked tinder above it. Then set the wood in a pyramid formation and set it on fire. The old wood smoked horrendously, sending a black plume into the sky.
“That his jacket you’re wearing?” Veder came up beside me, hooking his hands on his belt buckle, as we both gazed into the flames.
“Yes,” I said, suddenly aware of the cinnamon scent that came from the threads. Griff always smelled like leather and spice. I had never clocked that on any other man besides him, and now I was surrounded by it, even though he wasn’t around.
I wanted to take the jacket off and throw it into the fire, but… couldn’t.
“How do you feel about that?” Veder asked.
“How do you feel about it?” I deflected.
Veder shrugged, feigning casual, even as he gritted his teeth, his jaw ticking.
“Griff has a right to do whatever he wants.” He looked at his 1992 Ford F-series, then sighed. “I guess I should pack my stuff.”
“I don’t know why you let him push you around,” I said, bristling. I hated that Griff’s presence was everywhere, and his will was law. “You didn’t know Kristin was his wife. She gave you a fake name.”
Not like Griff was blameless there. He certainly moved on before the divorce was final.
He had moved on with me. Then… Sandra? Lisa? Then there was Noami, Gina, and Melissa…
It was like the two of them switched. Veder, as I saw, became a monk. Griff should have been the one we called VD.
“It’s not just that,” Veder said, sticking another log on the growing flame.
The rot, paint, and paper made black smoke billow upwards high and proud as we stood with the red barn behind us.
“I mean, it’s a little bit that,” Veder amended. “But I was already in a bad way. Getting drunk and sleeping with faceless women? It was going to bite me in the ass. The truth was I didn’t like myself much and needed to change. Wronging, and then losing my best friend was just rock bottom.”
We stood in silence for a minute, staring at the bonfire.
I found nothing in the world more calming than a fire. It was like harvesting the most destructive force and bending it to your will. I suppose that was why I liked explosions. The raw momentary power, bending to my will, creating a destructive force that I could wield.
Fire was what allowed humans to evolve. Fire, a destroyer, when wielded, became a creator.
“So what’s the drama with you two?” he asked, finally.
I didn’t say anything.
I had grown to like Veder’s new persona. He was practically a buddhist in his silence, and methodical in his daily tasks. He lived here for free but he also worked far beyond the room and board needed. The barn had been so broken but now it was picturesque, like new, with a loft on the top that could serve as an apartment. He’d poured concrete, reinforced beams, installed a bathroom, and insulated the place to be habitable, and did so much more to help out the McClanahans.
He abstained from drinking, partying, and had never brought a woman back as far as I had seen. That was no easy task for a handsome man in a small town, where good looking, single men were rare.
I was beginning to see it for what it was: Penance.
“I broke up with Riley,” I said, swallowing the spit that had formed in my mouth at the words.
Veder seemed to think of that for a moment before he nodded.
“That’s good,” he said.
Then he said nothing else.
“Good?” I pried, waiting to hear more of his opinion, but he said nothing as the orange flames reflected in his weathered face.
“You weren’t going to end up with Riley.”
“I thought you liked Riley.”
“I do like him,” Veder shrugged.
Unlike me, he had started befriending the locals in his own way. He liked to help and had hung out around the little farm down the road, rebuilding fences, and doing odd jobs for people around town.
The words that I wasn’t going to end up with a guy like Riley was too close to the ones that Griff had so proudly declared when he kept repeating, “I’m the guy.”
But I would hear Veder out because he was the closest to objective that I could have. Though Griff hated him, Veder didn’t hold a grudge against his former friend. Just… remorse.
“I love this new quiet, meditative thing you’ve got going on, but I’m going to need you to spit it out,” I said, in frustration.
Veder chuckled, his smile tilting up the corners of his scraggly beard.
“You two love each other,” Veder said. I resented the word love , but I didn’t interrupt him. “I used to give him serious shit about it, you know? Our second to last deployment, I could see he was nuts about you. He always wanted you with him, and he always picked you in the lineup. I was getting jealous, honestly.”
He kicked at the dirt beneath his toe, before he let out a long sigh, and stared up at the sky.
“Hell, even in the gym, I felt like a third wheel.” He looked at me, winced, then said, “I said some shitty things about you. I told him to just sleep with you and get it over with, so he could get you out of his system. I was kidding, and I’m sorry I said it. But back then, I was an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole now?” I asked, nudging him with my shoulder.
He nudged back and smiled. “I don’t know what I am right now.”
We righted ourselves, and stared back out at the flames, mesmerized by the movements.
This was why we called fire “Ranger TV”. Airborne Rangers had a tendency to get hypnotized by it, zoning it the way others might in front of trash television.
“He was loyal to Kristin because that’s the kind of guy he is. He works at things, until defeat is certain, and even then… he’d probably keep working at it.” He leaned down and picked up another plank and threw it onto the growing fire. “I think that if it wasn’t for you, he’d still be married to Kristin, trying to work it out with couple’s counseling, and figuring out how to be mutually miserable.”
He turned his head, his long shaggy brown hair starting to pick up in the wind. His piercing green eyes looked deep into my soul.
“I get why he’s nuts about you,” he said, slowly. “You push back and challenge him. You’re like two swords, clashing and sharpening each other at the same time.”
“Cute metaphor,” I grumbled, trying to deflect the heaviness of what I knew was coming.
“He doesn’t get that often from anyone. He likes that in people. He used to like it in me.” I could hear the regret in his voice, but he let out a long breath, and then shrugged. “Plus, you understand him. The Army, clandestine services, government work… that’s his passion. You’ve lived it. So you get it. He never has to explain himself, and you will never drag him down.”
Veder turned to me fully, half his face still flickered red by the light, the sky behind him now going from a sunrise peach to a washed out blue.
“But what does he offer you ?” He tilted his head, as if truly perplexed by the question.
I almost flinched. “What do you mean?”
“What does he do for you? Do you like him? Does he fulfill something inside you that you couldn’t fulfill yourself?” He turned back to the fire. “And does he do it in a way that heals whatever wound you have and bring you a sense of peace?”
These questions must have been out of some religious text he was reading. It was amazing how much he had grown. The guy I knew in the Army found joy in the bottom of a bottle and a warm hole. He was neurotic, and energized, extreme in all cases. It was like he couldn’t sit still.
But this version of himself was perfectly unmoving.
“You’re really profound at 7 AM in the morning,” I sighed, trying to deflect.
He didn’t take the bait.
“Does he add to your burdens, or help you shoulder them? Does he give you strength, or steal it from you?”
I wasn’t sure.
“Can the answer be both?” I asked, not sure how to even wrap my head around these things.
“Of course, it can. But is that something you can live with long term?” Veder let out a sigh. “I get you, sometimes, you know?”
“I don’t know what that means,” I whined, “but I feel like I should have had coffee before I came here.”
“Shit parents. I bet you moved around a lot, had a ton of economic insecurity. You have trouble getting food on the table growing up? Your hyper intelligence probably got you beat up more than it got you praised as a kid.” He listed off things I didn’t know we had in common. I had always assumed that while Veder wasn’t exactly a “Griffith” level rich, that he probably had a nuclear family, and was prom king. “You have trouble forming relationships, and holding on to them, because the way you were shown love as a kid created an insecure attachment. You probably always wanted your mom’s approval, never got it, realized you’d never get it, so you said, ‘fuck it’, and learned to rely on yourself and no one else. Now you’re afraid to let anyone in because, ultimately, you think they’ll make you feel as shitty as your mom did… or does… and you believe that, in the end, everyone who cares about you will hurt you.”
He turned his head and smirked.
“How’d I do?” he asked, looking for feedback on his assessment.
I blushed, and that was all the answer he needed. “You a shrink now?”
“I’ve been reading a lot about attachment theory,” he confessed, scratching at the nape of his neck. “You really want my opinion?”
I nodded, because I needed someone else to tell me what to think.
“You came here to get away from him, by hanging out with the one guy he hates. You think he won’t come here if he knows I’m around.” He turned to me again, then with a nod of his head, beckoned me to go inside the barn. “But you’re wrong about that, you know? Normally, yes, he wouldn’t come within a one-mile radius of me, but for you?”
The barn, devoid of any livestock, looked like one of those places where you might have those rustic weddings. Perfect, square bales of hay lined the walls, and old equipment lay strewn about, waiting for repairs.
I closed the big barn doors behind me to keep out the morning chill. Not that it mattered. The big lofty space was going to be cold no matter what. Not unless there were more bodies to warm it.
“To be together, you need to heal yourself from the parental trauma of neglect,” he said, walking away, while reciting all my deepest, darkest issues. “And he’ll need to not bully you into the corner, while also not punishing you for Kristin’s actions.” He took a deep breath. “And you need to tell him about Heath.”
I stiffened, feeling the pain of it all. A dislocated arm, a kick to the ribs. My face. My eyes. My ear ringing. Crawling, with a swollen knee and ankle, as a gun was pointed at my face…
I pushed it aside. Blocked it out, in fact, forgetting it all in the same instant it was mentioned.
“He did nothing wrong with Kristin.” Maybe he was madder at Griff than I thought.
“He didn’t do anything wrong to Kristin,” Veder corrected. “But he married a chick he didn’t like to please his parents and fuel his ambition. He never compromised or asked her what she wanted, and he assumed she’d go along, and would bully her if she didn’t. He’s always laying down ultimatums and giving orders. She lashed out by cheating, which ultimately comes from a place of not feeling loved. At least for her.”
“How the fuck do you know this?” Suspicion coiled in my stomach – was it truly a one night stand? Or did he and Kristin go back further? “Did she tell you that?”
“No,” he shook his head, his long, wavy hair tossing around his ears. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about old conversations and analyze them with a clearer mind. Everything I know, I learned from Griff himself in little clips and anecdotes.”
He walked over to an old, white fridge and popped it open. He casually flipped on his phone, looking at a notification, before putting it back in his pocket.
“Tea?” he said, pulling out an iced tea and offering it to me.
I went to grab it as he stood up, but he held on. There we were, the two of us holding onto a glass bottle reminiscent of another night, with another man.
“For you, he’ll storm right in here and punch me in the face.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” I said, shaking my head, as I stared at our hands on the glass.
“Want a bet?”
“Sure,” I laughed, feeling a little lighter from the heaviness of last night’s events already. “Twenty?”
“A hundred if he storms in here,” he said with absolute certainty. “Another hundred if he punches me in the face.”
“Deal,” I said, tugging on the glass, but he still didn’t let go.
The barn door rattled open, the walls practically shaking with the force, and I looked to see the silhouette of a man with fists clenched. Griff’s eyes landed on VD, then the bottle we held between us. I felt the molten heat of his gaze, and almost flinched away.
Veder didn’t look, but instead, leaned down to kiss my cheek then whispered, “I’m hooked to Top’s cameras. I saw him driving up the road. Now, he’s gonna punch me. Just watch.”
He straightened, let go of the tea and grinned, as Griff stormed over, his hand poised to strike.
I jumped in front of Veder, “Griff, it’s not what you think.”
“You son of a bitch!” Griff said, his fist flying through the air, over my shoulder and smashing into Veder’s face. “My wife wasn’t enough, so now you’re trying to steal Taz from me too?”