Listening to Dust (2 page)

Chapter 2

Aix en Provence
 

Stephen was still lounging in bed watching the sunlight creep over the horizon when he heard Colette barge in the front door with a basket of food, just as she did almost every morning. He laid there staring at the ceiling until she stood silhouetted in his bedroom door.
 

“Mon pauvre petit souris,” she greeted him with an affectionate slant to her head. “You look as if it’s the end of the world.”
 

“Oui, Mémé,” he replied half-heartedly. He loved his Gran but he was getting a bit too old to be referred to as her ‘
poor little mouse,
’ a title he’d had since he was about three.
 

“Come on, breakfast is on the table. Can’t you smell the freshness of the morning air? Don’t waste your day staring at those cracks,” she said as she inhaled deeply and glanced up at the ceiling he was staring at again.
 

He watched her turn and go back to the kitchen. Her tone made it sound as if she had something on her mind a bit more involved than the fragrant morning air. But it was a true aspect of Aix that he loved, despite his continuing mood. Every morning the sun rose up and sizzled the herbs in the fields around the cottage, creating a waft of fragrance and freshness. During harvest the area was a literal bouquet on the wind. It was one of the reasons he had retreated here, hoping that the escape to his childhood refuge would temper his memories of Dustin. But once he had arrived he realized what a mistake that had been. Instead of forgetting Dustin, he was seeing him on every corner and wishing to have had the opportunity to show him the Aix that he knew; the Aix that the tourists only lingered over for a few seconds with the click of a shutter before they moved off to other picturesque interests.
 

Over a breakfast of brioche, fig jam and fresh melon he and Colette debated the enigma of love without acceptance. Colette, the grand French dame that she was, could not understand his views and recoiled at his English way of thinking.
 

“Love steals everything from you, Mémé, and leaves you with nothing,” he tried to explain.
 

“You English. Je n'aurais jamais permis à ta mère de télever en Angleterre. Everything is so.... désagréable. And stupide.”
 

He looked at her in some shock and shrugged. When he had first arrived in Aix after the murder of his parents at age twelve, she had never mentioned her long held grievance against his mother for raising him in England with her English husband. But as he had grown older and more able to handle the circumstances of the tragedy of their deaths, she had voiced that grievance more and more.
 

“The English curse,” he advised her. “We spend so much time in dissatisfaction that we forget the only real importance should be focused on what doesn’t cease.”
 

“And yet love is so heavy an object for you?” Colette chided him.
 

“Oui, Mémé. For men, between men, yes.”
 

She closed her eyes and sighed. “L'amour a une emprise sur la mort que la mort même ne peut ébranler.”
 

He looked at her curiously, waiting for her to explain.
 

She rolled her eyes at him. “Even Death cannot shake true love, Stephen, even death. This is not something that can be explained. It can only be known. You both live and yet you both suffer still. Why?”
 

Stephen shook his head, he had no answers. If he did, he would not have been in Aix. He had sighs and weariness and hurt; and yes...he had to admit, he had anger too. But answers he did not have.
 

She grabbed his hand like she had done when he was a child and opened his palm so that it was visible to both of them. She didn’t need to say the words anymore; he had gotten this lesson enough when Pépé was still alive.
 

His grandfather, who had died the year before his parents were killed, used to judge a man not just by his handshake, but by his hand as well. Pépé believed that even the most delicate hand had the power to build the world, and even the most hardened always held the danger of being shattered from its complex delicacy.
 

Pépé had lectured that a man’s hand could show you his power, but also his weaknesses. It could lead you down inside the man, down to where all his black animals were caged. He also claimed that all men had two faces; one you could see with your heart, the other you felt with your soul, and both would be captured within the contours of his hand.
 

“I don’t know what to do, Mémé. I really don’t,” Stephen told her. “I love him, and I know he loves me, but it’s... not the same for him. He looks at what we had as a memory, as something he can sustain himself with.  I... can’t do that. I feel empty without him. I thought I would be over him by now, but….” He shook his head.
 

She sighed. “Love creates changes, Stephen, physically, in the body. You young people think it’s all in your head, but it’s not. You’ve changed him and he changed you. I can feel it here,” she said as she squeezed his hand. “You came here to escape and he went there to escape, but from what? From love?” she asked him pointedly.
 

“You make it sound so absurd, Mémé.”
 

She nodded. “Because it is, because you put all these
things
between you and him; between you and your heart. And he does the same. It
is
absurd. No matter what people think, no matter what they say, what you have is between you two, no one else. And that means that only you two can abandon it. Do you understand that?”
 

“I understand, Mémé, but…” Stephen began.
 

“But nothing, if his heart is as yours is, then what has come between you two is only in your heads, and that can be overcome. In time, the heart always trumps.”
 

“Mémé…” He so wanted this to be true, but she just did not understand the complexities.
 

 “Hush,” she said, cutting off his argument. “Take this. I cannot watch you suffer needlessly. Go to him; wait for him if you must. But don’t give him up because of what others think. That will be something you would both regret for the rest of your lives, and that
is
absurd.” She pushed a plane ticket across the table, which he immediately pushed back.
 

“And if I’m wrong,” Stephen asked, “If his heart isn’t what I think it is? If I’m doing nothing more than wishing my own feelings on him?”
 

“Then his heart was never what you thought it was,” Colette told him. “But do you really think that’s true; that everything you told me was just your own misinterpretation?”
 

He shook his head. Dustin had said everything but the three words he had wanted to hear most; everything. And he thought the only reason those words had never crossed Dustin’s lips was because he was so utterly afraid that someone would love him back and really mean it, as if love was going to be something he’d be locked into like he was locked into his own past.
 

Eventually, Colette had won their argument and he had taken a plane from Charles de Gaulle to Atlanta. There he rented a car, whose bloody steering wheel was on the wrong side, and had driven the perilous journey to the backwater town that Dustin called home.
 

Chapter 3

The Diner
 

“I came to get him,” Stephen said, explaining his presence to Robbie. “And you,” he added after a moment.
 

 Once he said the words aloud, Stephen realized that they were true. He hadn’t flown over just to make Dustin realize how much he loved him. He’d come to rescue Dustin from this existence. He’d come to take Dustin away and free him from all the self-imposed fetters that held him in this town. He also became conscious of the fact that he’d been secretly harboring the hope that he could persuade Robbie to help him convince Dustin that his own life and his own happiness were worth going after and sacrificing for.
 

Did that make him selfish and depraved? Had he really come all this way to manipulate a mentally handicapped man to become his accomplice in taking away the only relative that actually cared for him? But Robbie had fought with Dustin to leave once before; would he have done it again when the outcome was to make Dustin’s absence more permanent? Stephen shook his head slightly at the warring thoughts in his head.
 

 “That would have been something,” Robbie ventured as he considered a trip to Europe.
 

Stephen nodded slowly at his pronouncement, hearing it but understanding the futility of it as well. Dustin would never have left. Stephen understood that now, despite what he had been telling himself.  
 

Even with Robbie’s help, Dustin would not have allowed Stephen to pull him away. And if he had allowed it, it would have been something Dustin regretted, worried about, and begrudged Stephen with forever, especially if anything ever happened to Robbie in his absence. In the end of that scenario Stephen would have been left with nothing but a double share of guilt and a heart cleaved through in the same crack that Dustin’s departure from London had caused.
 

Robbie seemed to gather his mental wanderings as Stephen brooded, and verbalized his vagrant thoughts. “You got castles an’ such?” Robbie asked. “Imagine me in a castle. Maybe we could’ve got Danny over there. Me and him could’ve played knights and fought dragons...” He stopped suddenly and looked at Stephen suspiciously. “Wait a minute. You got trains?”
 

He wore a face of such serious doubt that Stephen had to smile. “Yes, we have trains, lots of trains,” he told Robbie, but as he said it his smile faded because he realized that Robbie knew this already. The trains were the excuse Dustin had used for his extended stay in London.
 

Robbie nodded. “That’d be okay then, now that Pa...” His face sobered quickly with a fear-filled frown. “They gonna put me in the chair for sure. Man can’t just kill his pa.”
 

“I don’t know...” Stephen began.
 

“You telling me men are allowed to kill their pas in U-rope?” Robbie asked him.
 

“No, but...”
 

“At least it’s prison time for me, that’s what Mr. McGee said. Heck, we was both surprised they let Miss Emily bond me out. That’s what all that dim ‘pacity talk was about back when all this started. But I think it was just a polite way of calling me the dummy like Pa use to,” he added with a small twinge of sadness in his voice.
 

Robbie smiled again as his attention shifted to the towering whipped cream floating on his cocoa. “Jeanie makes the best cocoa,” he said as he picked up his spoon and ate the cream off of it, and then after a small silence he said, “Maybe Dusty was right.”
 

“About what?” Stephen asked.
 

“He used to have this saying. He said he got all the brains, I got all the brawn, and Drew got all the love. It weren’t too nice, but I ‘spect it was true.
 

“Before my accident I think I probably would’ve fought him over something like that,” he said as he shrugged. “Dunno for sure, but after that lightning made me dumb things changed. No one was the same. Pa kept looking at me funny. Mama got more heavier into her drugs, and Drew didn’t come ‘round nare too much anymore.”
 

His body shuddered as he seemed to choke back a gush of sudden emotion. “I’m gonna miss him something fierce, Mr. Stephen. Dusty said he’d always be there for me like a big brother was supposed to. After Drew had his accident there weren’t no family left really, just me and Dusty.”
 

Accident?
Stephen wondered. Maybe Robbie was unaware that he and Dustin had discussed Andrew’s death.
 

As Dustin had explained, a year after Robbie’s own infamous
accident
, Drew had returned and he and Stewart had a full blown gun battle, blasting at each other through the floorboards of their house while Dustin and Robbie had cowered in terror in another bedroom. Through the floor of his old room, Andrew had been firing down at his unseen father, while Stewart had been firing up through the ceiling at his unseen son. They had both raged like rabid animals, cursing each other for past and future failures and laying their own faults on the other.
 

One gunshot had finally silenced the house. There was a thud and Stewart had glanced upward apprehensively. He knew he hadn’t made the last shot. He’d called out Drew’s name and receiving no reply, had thrown his own shotgun aside and raced up the stairs screaming.
 

It had been Andrew’s first and last visit to their house since his hurried departure after Robbie’s accident and Stewart had somehow laid the blame for Andrew’s suicide squarely on Dustin’s shoulders. According to Stewart, it had been Dustin’s fault for turning his only
real
son queer, for running Andrew off, and for getting that bitch Miss Emily involved in private family matters.
 

“What was Drew like?” Stephen asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it. Everything Dustin had told him had all but cemented Stephen’s opinion of Andrew, but maybe Robbie could offer a different perspective. Maybe all this tragedy could make sense somehow.
 

“Drew?” Robbie asked. “Well, he had his problems, but in my folks’ eyes he couldn’t do no wrong. They just wouldn’t hear of such. Never.
 

“When they buried Pa a couple of months back, the sheriffs brought me his personals,” Robbie said, “his watch, wallet and stuff. He only had one picture in his wallet. It was one of us three boys, but me and Dusty was cut out so only Drew was left. Miss Emily told me I ought to throw it out, but I still got it.
 

“So, if truth be told, it was just as Dusty said. He got all the brains, I got all the brawn, and Drew, he got all the love.
 

“See, Drew was born first when things was still good for Pa,” he explained further. “When Dusty came along things had already started downhill, and by the time I got here, well, they had done hit rock bottom. Pa was drinking, Mama was drugging, and there weren’t much in between ‘cept Drew shining like an owed favor. He ate it up too, even if the light weren’t really his.
 

“Didn’t you hear all this in court?” Robbie asked. “They put all our laundry out there for these gossiping folks. Miss Emily said they had to, but I didn’t see no cause for it. Everyone is dead, ‘cept for me, so what’s the use?”
 

“I .... No. I wasn’t in court, Robbie,” Stephen stumbled. “I’m sorry. When I stopped at the police station to ask for directions the officer directed me to the courthouse.” He looked at his watch. “That was just a little over an hour ago.”
 

Robbie looked at him in blank and utter astonishment. “You didn’t know nothing, nothing at all?”
 

Stephen stifled a sob and shook his head, his emotions trying to gain a foothold as they had in front of the police station.
 

*****
 

“Could you direct me to the Earl residence? Dustin Earl,” Stephen had asked the closest bobby as he stepped out of his rental car. But they didn’t call them bobbies here...What did they call them? Sheriff? Deputy? Officer? Yes, that was it — officer.
 

Before the officer’s eyes had slipped into a natural pose of suspicion, Stephen thought he’d witnessed a moment of unguarded astonishment, and it was at that immediate moment that his dread had come to a focus and told him that he should not have followed Colette’s unsolicited advice. He should have stayed in France and just called it over.
Finis
.
 

“You that London boy?” the officer asked.
 

Stephen’s stomach folded in on itself as he nodded apprehensively. There was no reason this bobby should know him, or even of him. “But I don’t live there anymore. I live in France,” he babbled nervously.
 

The officer replied with some guttural noise of disinterest before he folded his arms across the roof of his cruiser and scrutinized Stephen further. “Dustin Earl is dead. Murdered. Three months back,” he said after a moment.
 

Stephen reeled and fell back against the rental car while the officer watched.
 

“His trailer is still a crime scene until we clear it, though I expect that to be soon. Or at least after the trial is done. It’s not really a crime scene anymore, but Barney, ah, Mr. Murdoch, wants to keep it closed off until everything’s over.”
 

“Trial?” Stephen asked.
 

“Robbie. You know about Robbie?” the officer asked.
 

“His brother. Yes.”
 

“Well, it’s a big mess down at the courthouse. Robbie killed Stewart after Stewart killed Dusty.” He turned his head, rolled his tongue through a slightly budging front lip and spat; whether it was in disgust because of him, or because of the Earl clan, Stephen didn’t know.
 

The officer peered at him closely for a few more seconds before an internal shrug seemed to change his demeanor. “Courthouse is just down the road a-piece. Best to leave your car and just walk. Whole damned county turned out to see if they’re going to fry him or not.”
 

“But he’s....”
 

“A dummy? Yeah.” The officer’s radio sparked to life and he glanced at the window of the station in irritation as a women’s voice came across it. “I’m going. I’m going,” he called to her. He looked back at Stephen. “Just down the road a-piece.” He pointed down the sidewalk behind Stephen.
 

After the cruiser had pulled out, Stephen fought the door of his rental car and fell into the seat, his mind chattering in inconsistencies and denials until he heard Dustin’s voice.
 

“Cowboy up.”
 

It was so loud and solid that he flinched and looked up. No one. Not a soul around him. He was alone. Truly alone. For the last year he had lived in solitude in the south of France trying to outrun his own memories, and now they were all he had left; the only thing from the best eight months of his life; the only eight months in his existence that he had considered to be actually living.
 

“Cowboy up.”
 

“Dustin?” He looked around, seeing nothing, yet hoping...
 

Toughen up, Dustin had chastised him. The world sucked. The cowboy way was to live hard, die rough, and find love in between. The last part Stephen had added to Dustin’s mantra to soften its barbarity because, before this moment, he’d thought that he had lived hard enough. He thought that the murder of his parents had given him the callus nucleus life used to teach us with. But even that instance was not as hard as the steel that severed his heart at this moment; even the rough splinter of their deaths had never reached as deep as the sharp point of Dustin’s love, or the further jabbing of Dustin’s death.
 

“Cowboy up,” he said aloud as he pulled some tissue out of his bag and wiped at his face. How long had it been since he’d allowed Dustin’s platitudes to enter his head? Did he want to start that again, here, now?
 

And what the bloody hell was he thinking? The courthouse? That was ridiculous; he should go home immediately. But ‘home’ was not really his home anymore. He had run from London to take refuge from his emotions and escaped back to France. He had thought himself a weak coward for it and wondered if Colette felt the same. But it was these same emotions that were now boiling over and threatening to sweep him down this dirty American street in this dirty American town. “I’ll never forgive you for this, Colette,” he whispered across the ocean as the tears began anew.
 

 “Cowboy up,” he heard again.
 

“Yes. I hear you! I bloody hear you!” he yelled at no one as he wiped his face once more. He stood, slammed the car door shut and walked in the general direction of the courthouse, oblivious to everything except his destination and the tight rein he held against an impending breakdown.
 

Inexplicably, the sight of the courthouse had calmed him, the familiar stone columns and severe granite-marble face easing some of the tension he held. He took immediate refuge in whatever architecture it was that gave official buildings an air of composure and was thankful for it.