14. Jonny
Chapter fourteen
Jonny
There’s a cross on the front of Shiloh Baptist on Palmer. Lit up, and twelve feet of it. I go around the side of the building instead.
The side door lets into a corridor that smells of coffee and floor polish and, underneath that, of every church hall I’ve ever stood in anywhere in the world. They are the same building in forty countries. Someone always brings a folding table.
There’s a sign with PHOENIX SOCIETY on it and an arrow. I follow the arrow into a meeting room with cinder-block walls and an antiseptic white tile floor under a drop ceiling lit by fluorescents. Chairs in neat rows in front of a podium. A coffee urn at the back.
I’m well over an hour late and that’s deliberate.
There are eleven or twelve people left, stacking chairs and not hurrying about it. A woman is pouring the last of an urn down a sink at the back.
And on an easel by the door, four feet high, there’s a photograph of a boy in an emergency shelter cowering in Lance Broussard’s arms.
FAIRHAVEN REMEMBERS. TEN YEARS.
“Parker! My God, it is you!”
Henry Drumm, my old neighbor, is crossing the hall with a set of stacked chairs still in one hand and a grin that’s already certain I’m as glad to see him as he is to see me.
“Mr. Drumm,” I say, and he puts the chairs down and opens his arms and hugs me. Awkwardly, I step into the embrace.
“Look at you! My God, I can’t get over it. Parker Bishop.”
“I go by Jonny now,” I say. “Nobody’s called me Parker in at least ten years.”
“Jonny.” He tries it out. “All right. Jonny.” He pulls back and shakes his head. “You look so different. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Oh, it’s just a little henna in my hair.” It’s not the only change, but I’m being modest. Since I started making videos, I’ve had to be more careful about how I look.
“It’s not just that,” Henry says. “It’s everything. You look so—wow. And your accent. Where’ve you been?”
“South and Southeast Asia, mostly. For work.”
“Sit down. There’s coffee.”
“I’m not staying. I came about the photograph.”
“Isn’t it something?” He turns to look at it with open affection. “We had it blown up two years ago. There’s a smaller one behind the podium. That picture built this whole thing, you know that? People see two boys covered in ash and they open their wallets.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I’d like it taken down.”
He stops.
“Taken down,” he repeats.
“From the poster. From the program, if I’m in it. From all of it.” I keep my voice pleasant, because I’ve had ten years of practice being pleasant to people who are about to disappoint me. “I was seventeen. I never consented to that picture and nobody has asked me about it since.”
There’s a woman by the window who has stopped pretending to tidy.
“Son,” Henry says, and puts his hand on my shoulder, “that picture is the reason people came.”
“I understand that.”
“Thirty-one people died, and after about eighteen months nobody wanted to hear about it anymore, and then somebody put that photograph on a flier and we filled a room.” He pats the shoulder. “You did that. You and Lance. You didn’t mean to, but you did.”
“I’d still like it down.”
“I can’t do that.”
He says it so warmly that it takes me a second to register that it’s a refusal.
“It’s already printed,” he continues. “It’s on the banner, it’s on the website, it’s on the thing the paper’s running. It’s ten days, Jonny. That picture went all over the country. It’s one of the signature images of the Fairhaven wildfires.”
“Then let me make you something else instead.”
“Something else like what?”
“I make films. That’s my work. I’ve got a channel with four hundred thousand subscribers and I shoot and cut everything myself.
” I take out a card and put it on the table between us.
“Let me make you a proper film for the anniversary. Interviews. The park dedication. People talking about who they lost, in their own words. Something that isn’t two frightened kids on a cot. ”
Henry picks up the card and holds it at arm’s length to read it.
“Jonny on the Spot,” he says.
“It’s better than it sounds.”
“You’d do that for us?”
“I’d do it instead of the photograph.”
He isn’t listening to that part. He’s turning the card over excitedly.
“That would be wonderful,” he says. “That would be absolutely wonderful. They’re dedicating the Suzannah Drumm Memorial Park on the day, did you know that? Out where the school field used to be. A lot of people were asking if you were going to be there.”
I rock back on my heels. “Why?”
“Well, you were one of the most famous survivors.” He glances at the door, as if I might have sent Lance back to go and park the car. “How’s Lance? I assume you two stayed in touch.”
“I haven’t seen Lance in a long time,” I say. “I heard he got married, so—” I only know that because I was weak and looked him up a couple of years ago. Ancient history. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m cool.
“Did he? It’s a shame you fell out of touch.
You two were thick as thieves.” He looks at me indulgently.
“The anniversary’s bringing a lot of things to the surface for people.
Eloise—do you remember her? From the gym?
She killed herself about five years back.
And we lost Randolph Dare the year after that. ”
I put my hand on his arm. “I didn’t know.”
“Eloise, after Frank died, she just said life wasn’t worth living.” He shakes his head. “But happier things. I remarried about four years ago. Lydia Corley. Her husband died in a car crash and we bonded over losing our spouses, and one day I realized maybe it was my second chance.”
“Suzannah would have wanted that for you,” I say, even though I don’t remember her that well anymore.
He smiles. “There’s a whole community here that cares about you. We meet Sunday afternoons. And bring Lance, too, if you track him down. He’s one of us as well.”
The woman from the window has come over. She stands at the end of the table with her hands folded.
“Henry, before you go,” she says. “I want to raise the footage again.”
Something happens to Henry Drumm’s face.
It’s very fast. It’s there and gone in about the time it takes to blink, and if I hadn’t been looking directly at him I’d have missed it entirely.
“We’ve discussed this, Alice.”
“We haven’t, though. You’ve said no twice and walked off.” She says it without heat. “I filmed the whole street that morning. Denning Court, from the cul-de-sac all the way to the intersection with Hemingway Road.”
A piece of that autumn comes back, whole and out of nowhere.
She offered it to me once before—at the wake, when I was seventeen and couldn’t stand up straight, and I told her no.
Elliott was out in the front yard the whole of that morning, and if she came up that road with a phone in her hand, then my brother is on that tape.
Neither of them is looking at me, which is fortunate.
“It isn’t appropriate.”
“It’s the only moving picture of any of it.”
“It is not appropriate for a memorial,” Henry says, “and I am not going to sit in a room and watch it, and neither is anybody else.”
That’s not the voice he’s been using for the last few minutes with me.
He clearly hears it himself. He puts a hand up, half apology. “Forgive me. It’s a hard week.” He turns to me, and the warmth comes straight back on. “Jonny, this is Alice. Another Denning Court person! Can you believe it?”
I look at her. “I remember you! From the day of the fires. You were walking up the street when I was taking out the trash. I think we talked at the wake, but I honestly don’t remember very much from that time period. It’s mostly a blank.”
“It was a hard time,” Henry says.
She shakes my hand. “Alice Cadwalader.” She’s still looking at me with that careful, measuring expression. “You’re Angela’s boy. It seems like yesterday you were just a kid. You’ve grown up. Your mom would have been proud.”
“Did you know my mother well?”
She looks uneasy. “By sight, mostly. We never really spoke.” She pauses. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Henry grasps me by the bicep and turns toward the door. “Listen, I need to sweep up. We left crumbs at the last meeting and they called me up about attracting ants.”
I nod. She hasn’t stopped studying me. Her eyes keep returning to my jawline, my brow, as if she’s tracing a map she’s seen before.
“I hate that fucking photo,” I tell her.
“It’s everywhere. It’s branded me and my whole life.
People look at me like they know me and they don’t.
They shouldn’t have access to the worst day of my life like it’s a shortcut to understanding me.
I am more than that goddamned day, and more than the guy that was crying in Lance Broussard’s arms.” I pull myself together and swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
She smiles at me sadly and puts her hand on my arm. “I think if anybody has any right to be enraged, it’s probably you.” She sighs. “I’ll talk to him, but he’s right. Your picture made the tragic into something personal. That’s why we’re getting a park.”
“Then, if it’s my picture, and my fucking family, why isn’t it called Bishop Memorial Park?” I demand.
“Because he was here, and you weren’t,” she says calmly.
I take a deep breath. “You can tell me I’m being out of line any time now.”
“You’re not.” She shakes her head slowly, but she’s still looking at me with that quiet intensity. “No offense taken. I can understand wanting a clean break.” She pauses. “You remind me of someone.”
I wait for her to say who, but she doesn’t. She just looks at me for a beat too long, and it makes the hair on my arms prickle. It’s not hostile. It’s not even unfriendly. But there’s a weight to it, as if she’s deciding whether to speak.
“Someone from Denning Court?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “From somewhere else entirely.” She blinks and reaches for her purse. “Can I get your contact information?”
“Henry has my card.”
“I’d like my own, if you don’t mind.”
I give her one. She takes it and studies it quietly.
My phone sounds in my pocket.
Aunt Shelley
Don’t ask me why. Captain Eddie’s. Catfish and fries and the hush puppies. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon and I’m not going to be talked out of it. Extra coleslaw.
And then, ten seconds later:
Aunt Shelley
I’m unwell and I want fried food.
“Everything all right?” Alice says.
I look back at that poster of my terrified face. “Yeah,” I say, and put the phone back in my pocket.