Of Royal Descent (8 page)

My father was a good man.  A
side from the episode earlier that day, I couldn't recall a time when he'd ever raised his voice to me.  And he certainly had never struck me before.  On the whole, he was quite a patient and good-humored man.  But there were certain things he took very seriously, such as knowing where his children were at all times. 

Maybe it was because of the adoption factor, but my parents had always been overprotective of both Jenny and
me.  And now, not only had I left home without telling him, I'd left my phone off for an inexcusable amount of time.  My ears were already burning from the inevitable lecture on responsibility and consideration for others.

I dialed "1" and held the phone to my ear. 

Message 1 was from my father:  "Doyle, we got cut off.  Call me back!"

Message 2 was also from my father:  "Doyle, I don't care if you're angry at me
; you need to call me back immediately.  I am trying to do what is best for you, son.  Call me back."

Message 3 was from m
y mother:  "Doyle, your father and I are very worried about you.  We love you.  Call us as soon as you turn your phone on.  *There was a pause as she began to cry.*  And don't forget to drink lots of water, Charles too.  Hydration is the key to preventing constipation on long car trips."

Message 4 was a hang up from an unknown caller.

Text message 1 was from Jenny:  DUDE, THE 'RENTS R SPAZZING.  WHERE R U?

Text message 2 was from Chuck:  U AWAKE?

Closing the bathroom door for a modicum of privacy, I exited my text messaging screen.  I sat on the edge of the tub and dialed my dad's number.  It went straight to voicemail.  I hung up and tried my mom's number.  It, too, went straight to voicemail.  I flipped the phone closed and stared at the floor. 

No way
both of their phones just happen to be off
, I thought.  Something had to be going on.  I flipped my phone back open and texted Jenny.  R U AWAKE?

Almost immediately
, my phone buzzed with a response.  WHERE R U?  M&D JUST BOARDED A PLANE.

I stared at the readout, disbelieving. 
They just boarded a plane?

I texted my sister:  TO OHIO?!

Her reply:  YES.  SHOULD BE THERE IN COUPLE HOURS.

I flipped my phone closed and flung the door open.  Chuck stared at me, expectantly.

"They’re on a plane!" I spat out. 

Chuck's eyes grew round and his bottom jaw dropped.
  "Your parents?" he asked.

I nodded my head and paced to my bed.  I tossed my phone onto the bedspread and sank down beside it.  We remained as we were for a moment, pondering the situation.

Chuck was the first to break the silence.  "Well, you certainly win the most melodramatic parents of the year award."

I propped myself up on my elbows and looked over at Chu
ck who was staring back at me.  "This is crazy," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. 

"I mean, have I EVER given them cause to worry?" I asked.  "No," I continued, without giving Chuck a chance to answer. 
"No, not once, not ever.  And it wouldn't matter if I had!"  Realization slowly began to creep into the orifices of my understanding.  I was growing angry.

"I am twenty-one-fucking years old!"  I sprang out of bed and began to pace the room.
  "I told him I would call him back, and he can't even give me a few hours?  He's completely unreasonable!"  I continued. 

I sat back down on the edge of my bed, not knowing what action to take.  Chuck, who until now, had remained motionless, began to sit up on the side of his bed and face me.

"Yeah, that's pretty messed up.  I mean, are they actually coming here to pick you up and drag you home?  That’s embarrassing, dude."

"I don't know what else they could be thinking
," I muttered. 

"Well, do you know what you want to do?  I mean, when your dad gets here and you
don't
go with him, he's probably going to go all batshit crazy on us."  Chuck dropped his head and waited for a response.

"And if I do go...  I miss my date with Addy, have missed my opportunity of meeting my grandfather, have missed school for absolutely no reason, and basically
, will have figuratively castrated myself."

"Yeah.
  I'm up for whatever you want to do, but if I could just offer a quick opinion here," Chuck said, running his hand through his hair.  "If you go back with your dad, you're pretty much signing over your testicles for quite possibly the rest of your life.  I don't know Doyle, maybe you should think about moving out when we do get back to South Portland.  I love your parents and everything, but you gotta have some room to breathe."

"Yeah, you’re right," I agreed.

Chuck smiled.  "And hey, we could always be roomies if you wanted.  Think about the apartment upgrade if we combined forces."

I laughed, knowing exactly what Chuck meant.  His idea of
combining forces
was continuing to live off his father, who would be more than happy to foot the bill for an apartment for the both of us.

"Something to think about," I said grinning.  "In the meantime, I guess we should come up with a plan for our current situation."

"So, you
do
want to stay, try and meet your grandfather, right?"

I thought about the dream of my mother.  She had told me to run back home.  As real as it had felt, it still had been just a dream.  Then there was Addy. 
The thought of never seeing her again left a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth, not to mention the effects on my other body parts.

"Yeah,
I do."

"Ok then.  Did you tell them where we were? 
The hotel?"  Chuck asked.

"
No, just that we were in Ohio.  But since he knew why we drove to Ohio, I'm assuming he has the same address that we have for William."

"I
f his plan is to stop you before you see William, it doesn't make sense to go straight to William's and just wait for us to show up.  It would be too late."

"Maybe he thinks I'll return his calls in the morning and he could find out where I was that way?" I offered.

"Maybe.  But if that was the case, why would he leave now - at ten o'clock at night, when their estimated arrival couldn't be much longer than a couple hours?  Besides, what's the guarantee you would turn your phone back on?"

We sat quiet for a moment while we considered the situation.

"Hey, do you remember that time about a year ago when we were hanging out at David Corbin's house and playing Xbox?  And you fell asleep on the couch?"  Chuck asked.

"Yeah," I nodded, "How could I forget?  My dad showed up at the front
door... asking why I hadn't come home," I finished slowly, realization dawning.  Chuck was making a point.  How had my dad known I was there?  It never occurred to me to ask him.  We never hung out there before, and we had told no one we were going.

My phone buzzed beside me on the bed.  I flipped it open and read aloud:  "U OK?  U COMING HOME WITH M&D WHEN THEY GET THERE?"  I blew out a sigh and responded with:  "AM OK.  NOT COMING HOME YET."

Chuck smiled.  "Hey, doesn't your phone have GPS?"

I looked back down at my cell.  It was crazy to think what Chuck was suggesting.  Who tracks their adult children by GPS? 
Maybe psychotic fathers who have willingly admitted they have withheld important secrets from their children. 
I looked back up at Chuck.

"I have an idea," he said.

8

"
Do you remember when we were kids, and your dad built us that tree house in the backyard, and your mom would bring us up lemonade?" Chuck asked.

I smiled ruefully
.  "Of course I do.  That was the summer your mom passed away."

Chuck stared out the
El Camino’s front window as we bided our time, parked in a lot across the street from the hotel.

"Yeah, well, I never told you this
, but you saved my life that summer," Chuck continued.  I turned to look at him.  He wasn't joking.

"What
?" 

He kept his gaze focused out the front window.

"When my mom died, I wasn't right for a long time.  I was just a kid.  I couldn't understand why it happened." 

He paused
there, but I didn't say anything.  I was afraid I would derail him from his course of thinking.  Chuck generally steered clear of conversation topics that held any real emotional value, and even more rarely did he speak of his mother.

"
Two weeks after the funeral, Dad went back to work,” he began again.  “At the time, I couldn't understand how he could do that - go back to work like that, like nothing had changed.  Everything had changed.” 

He cleared his throat before continuing.  “
I started spending a lot of time in their bedroom.  It still smelled like her, and I would pretend she wasn't dead."  Chuck paused as headlights neared the entrance to the hotel.  We held our breath.  The car passed by, and we exhaled.

After a minute, when Chuck hadn't resumed his previous line of thought, I tried prompting him.

"Did it help?  Pretending she was still there?" I asked.

He shrugged.
                "One day, I was going through the dresser drawers to see if I could find anything of hers, and I found a gun."  We both sat quiet for a long minute before he picked back up. 

"
I loved that tree house.  It was the only place I felt like I could forget for a while.  Not about her, but about me not being with her.  Do you remember the night we made the oath?"  On the last sentence, Chuck smiled and glanced over at me.

"Are you referring to
The Blood Oath of the Brotherhood?" I asked melodramatically.

We hadn't spoken of it since we
were kids.  Wanting to impress Chuck with the pocketknife I had found in my dad’s desk, I told him I had something to show him, and we scrambled up into the tree house.  Pulling it out of my pocket, I could see Chuck's eye light up with curiosity. 

* * *

"What are we gonna do with it?" Chuck asked.

"I don't know.  We could carve something,
” I suggested, opening the knife slowly.

"Nah.”
  Chuck shook his head.  “We could probably hunt with it," he said, eyes never leaving the silver blade.

"
There’s nothin' round here to hunt,” I answered quickly, detesting the thought of hurting an animal.

"Hey, I know, let's make an oath," Chuck said, eyes
brightening.

"We can make an oath without a knife."

"Not a blood oath.  They're the coolest."  Chuck leaned forward and held out his hand for the knife.  I released it.

"I don't know
.  Won't it hurt?" I asked, shrinking back slightly from him.

"Nah..
.  Don't be scared," Chuck said more to comfort me than to tease me.

"I
’m not scared.  We just don't have nothin' to promise," I replied.

"Sure we do.  We'll promise to be best friends forever
.  We'll promise to be brothers - no matter what."  Chuck looked at me hopefully.

"Okay, brothers forever.  That means I always look out for you
, and you always look out for me."

"Right," Chuck said solemnly, bringing the knife to his left thumb and making a shallow cut across his thumb pad.

He held out the knife to me, and taking it in my right hand, I repeated the same motion, leaving a small swell of blood trickling down my thumb. 

"I, Chuck Johnson, hereby solemnly swear my loyalty and allegiance to my brother, Doyle Hawthorne, forever, no matter what," Chuck said, holding up his thumb and displaying a similar trickle of blood as that of my own.  I held up my thumb in response and repeated the oath.

"I, Doyle Hawthorne, hereby solemnly swear my loyalty and allegiance to my brother, Chuck Johnson, forever, no matter what."  We pushed our thumbs together.

"Brothers forever," Chuck said in a low, reverential tone.

"Brothers forever," I echoed.

* * *

Another set of headlights lit up the road.  We sat silently as we watched them go by without slowing down.

"Yeah, The Blood Oath of the Brotherhood,"
Chuck repeated wistfully as he smiled out the window into the darkness.  "Every day for at least a couple weeks, I snuck into their bedroom, pulled out the gun, and wondered if I would get to be with her again if I died." 

There was a slightly higher pitch of voice on the last word
, and I didn't dare look at him.  I had never, not once, saw Chuck Johnson cry, and I thought he might appreciate a moment of privacy while he composed himself.  He quickly and quietly cleared his throat.

"And every one of those times, I thought about my blood promise to my brother.  I promised my loyalty and protection to you no matter what, right?"  He shot me a half
-smile in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"Man, I don't even know what to say.  I didn't realize...  Thanks for always being there for me," I said, not really sure of how to respond.  This was uncharted territory.  Chuck turned to look at me.

"Calm down, Doily.  I don't want to go steady," he said with a grin.  And just like that, Chuck was back to himself.

"Hey, we got another one," he said, watching the headlights
make their way down the road.  Like the cars before, this one also passed by without incident.

We had been parked across the street for about half an hour, watching cars go by, in an attempt to test Chuck's hypothesis that my parents were tracking me by the GPS signal in my phone.  Although we had checked out of the hotel, my phone had been deliberately left behind, hidden in a fake plant in the corridor that had led to our room.

"What if they don't show?" I asked.

"
Then I guess it's safe to retrieve your phone, but I say we at least wait until daylight," he replied.

"And if they do show?"  I looked at Chuck.

"I suggest we find out what this big family secret is as quickly as possible."

I exhaled and leaned back against my seat.  A few more cars came and went as Chuck and I remained in our hiding spot, concealed in shadow by the side of Emily's restaurant. 

I looked at the digital readout on the dashboard clock.  12:32 a.m.  If my parents really had been tracking my whereabouts, and if there were no delays with their flight, they would be showing up at any time.

Another set of headlights flashed on the horizon.  They were traveling slower than all the other
s that had come before them.  A lump formed in my stomach. 
Could this really be happening?
  They continued toward us, practically at a crawl, until they turned into the parking lot of the hotel across the street. 

"Hold on, it still might not be them," said Chuck, w
ho probably felt the mixture of shock and anger that was surely rolling off me in waves. 

We watched as the car parked and the driver side door opened.  A figure began to unfurl itself from behind the wheel.  Before he was even fully out of the car, I knew it was my dad.  I sucked in a breath.

My mom followed suit and exited the passenger side door.  They scurried into the lobby together, and I cut my eyes to Chuck.

"Well, that sucks," he offered.  A moment passed, then two.

"I guess we're going to Plan B?" I asked.

"Looks like," he replied.

After a short pause, I asked, "Do we have a Plan B?"

"Yeah, d
on't let your parents find us," Chuck said.

"Awesome Plan B," I nodded.  "And just for the record, are you as freaked out
by this as I am?"

"It is somewhat disturbing," Chuck answered.

Our conversation was brought to an end with the ringing of Chuck's phone.  He slid his phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID.

"I think it's for you," he said, handing me the phone so that I could see the incoming caller.

DOYLE danced across the screen.  I took the phone, took a breath, and then took the call.

"Hello?" I answered, bitterness lacing each syllable.

"Listen to me," began my father's voice on the other end of the line.  "I know you must feel like you've been somehow betrayed.  I know how this must look, but everything I have ever done was done to protect you.  I am not your enemy.  You are in serious danger of crossing a line that you won't be able to uncross.  There are people out there who want to exploit and harm you.  If you will just meet with me, I’ll tell you everything, I swear."

"How do I know you're not going to club me in the back of the head and kidnap me?" I asked, completely serious.

I could hear the smile in my father's answer.

"Do you really think I'm going to hold you down while your mother swings the butt of a gun at your head?" he asked.

"You've been tracking me for years, so I'm more than willing to entertain all possible outcomes of a meeting with you." I replied. 

The pit of my stomach was churning
, courtesy of my newly acquired sixth sense. 

"Ok, tell me what I have to do for you to meet with me?  We'll do it your way.  Anything you want, you got it."

I looked over at Chuck who had been listening intently to my side of the conversation and keeping an unwavering eye on the lobby doors to the hotel.  I placed my hand over the mouthpiece of his phone and whispered, "He wants to meet."  I raised my eyebrows in question as Chuck turned to look at me.

"Go with your gut," he answered, before returning to his security detail of watching the
hotel doors.

Interesting choice of words
, I thought, as my gut was screaming at me.  I just couldn't decipher the meaning of the screams. 

"Doyle, are you there?" my father's voice came through the line.

"Yeah, I'm still here."

"I mean it, anything you want.  All I've ever wanted was just to keep you safe."

Time seem to stop as I remembered the dream of my mother.  She had told me to run back home, back to these people.  Maybe it was worth at least a meeting.  After all, these were the same people who raised me as their own.  They taught me right from wrong, how to tie my shoes, and how to use the toilet.  I was beginning to feel like a major dumbass for letting my imagination run wild for the last few hours.  How ludicrous to entertain the thought that I was part of some big conspiracy cover-up.  What proof had I had?  An old picture?  My father admitting to concealing
something
from me?  It could have been anything.  Maybe my grandfather had actually gone insane, and my father was just trying to spare me unnecessary grief over my lineage.

"Dad, I'm sorry.  Of course I'll meet with you," I finally answered.  "When do you want to meet?" I asked.

"Now," came my father's answer, a split second before the glass shattered on the El Camino's driver side window. 

Before I knew what was happening, Chuck was being dragged
through his now open door to the ground.  And there, standing above him and pointing a gun at my best friend, was my adoptive mother.  I had not yet processed what I was seeing before my own door was opened and I was being grabbed by the back of my shirt and pressed face-down into the ground.  I heard a soft click of a firearm behind my head, and my father's voice, low and close to my ear, whispered to me.

"I am only trying to save your life.  I would appreciate a little cooperation."

I rolled my face enough to the side so that I could breathe and answer my abductor.

"I was going to trust you."  I had tried to say the words without sounding like a betrayed and hurt child but was unsuccessful. 

"And you would've made the right choice," said my father, handcuffing me behind my back.  "You were just a little too late in making that decision."

"How did you find us?" I asked him.

"Chuck's phone is as easy to track as yours," my father answered unapologetically. 

On the other side of the car, I heard muffled conversation and wondered how Chuck was faring.

"If you let Chuck go, I'll come with you willingly.  He's not part of this," I bargained.

"You've made him part of this.  Once you know the truth, it won't matter anyway.  You'll be glad we brought him with us," my dad answered.