Chapter 20

If it sounds like Bruce demanded information and it came pouring out in a gush of catharsis, that would be wrong. It might have come gushing out like that, except that neither Bobby nor Mindy were given enough uninterrupted time to ... gush. Instead, the parents “reviewed” what they knew and then asked questions to get more information.

“Why couldn’t you talk to me about something like that?” complained Jane.

“I was so ashamed,” moaned Mindy.

“You said man,” commented Bruce. “You said man, not boy. And you said you stopped him. How? Did you just remind him that rape is frowned upon?’

“Well,” said Bobby. “You know I wrestle.”

“Ashamed?” yipped Jane. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not if it was rape. Why would you feel ashamed? Did you flirt with this man?”

“No!” yipped Mindy. “He did something to me. I wasn’t even aware it was happening!”

“Wrestle?” snorted Bruce. “Bob, you grope each other on a mat and try to trip each other up. That’s not real fighting. So you just took this man down and he gave up?”

“Of course you were aware of it!” wailed Jane. “He did something! He tried to rape you! I don’t understand!”

“Where were the police? Surely you reported this.” Bruce was on a roll. “And who was this man? I thought the rodeo was for high school kids. How could there be a man running around trying to rape people anyway? Where were the kids? Where were your friends?”

Mindy started crying again. Now, though, it was tears of helplessness and angst, rather than shame.

“It was complicated!” yelled Bobby. “Just shut up about it, okay?” He blinked as he realized he’d just screamed at his parents. He lowered his voice and tried again, with desperation in his voice. “It’s over, okay? It happened and it’s done! It’s why things happened between Mindy and me. So can we please move on?”

There were ten seconds of silence as shocked parents stared at the man their little boy had turned into. Well ... the man he was trying to be, anyway.

“I beg ... your ... pardon?” said Bruce, his voice dark. Bruce was an easy-going guy. He didn’t get mad about things, generally speaking. He didn’t think about it this way, but he was a man who had seen true darkness. He didn’t get angry about most things because he’d served in the Vietnam war, before Bobby was born. After that, he looked at life from a different perspective. Very little seemed important enough to waste energy on by just getting mad about it. It was much better to reflect on the blessings one had in life, than on some mere irritant.

Bobby had, though, seen him get wound up a few times, over the years, and it had never been pretty. He sensed one of those moments coming, and in his experience, those “moments” lasted sometimes days.

“Dad!” he said, trying to calm the situation. Mindy’s sobs were getting to him. “Please. If you never trusted me before this, trust me now. I can’t answer your questions. You don’t want me to answer your questions. If I do answer them, it will change everything, forever. Please, please, just let this drop.”

“Change everything forever?” whimpered Jane. Mindy’s tears were getting to her, too. “How on God’s green Earth can you think that things haven’t already changed forever?”

“What the hell is going on, here, Bob?” growled Bruce. “You’re acting like you killed somebody!”

He didn’t mean it literally. It was just a figure of speech. But what Bruce saw on Bobby’s face, and heard in Mindy’s accelerated sobbing struck fear in him that took him back to the days when faceless people tried to kill him every day.

“Come with me,” he said, his voice tight. He stood and held his hand out to his son.

“Where are you going?” wailed Jane. She’d heard that tone in his voice, too, the tone that meant he was working up to an old testament rage. They were rare, thankfully, but things had gotten broken in the past when he went on a rant. She had missed what Bruce had seen, on Bobby’s face. She’d detected the increase in distress Mindy was exhibiting, but didn’t connect it to Bruce’s comment. To be fair, she hadn’t even listened to Bruce’s comment. She had too much on her mind. “Don’t you hurt that boy!” she gasped.

Bruce paused, blinked and stared at his wife. Hurting his son was the farthest thing from his mind, at the moment, and it confused him that Jane had said that.

“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” he said. “We’re just going for a walk.” He knew how agitated everybody had become, and a sense of dread was prodding at him to de-escalate things. He looked at his son, unconsciously looking for the signs he had seen on the faces of other nineteen-year-old young men, back then. Killing changed a man ... haunted a man ... fucked with his mind in ways almost nothing else could. He knew how much it had changed him. Even the knowledge that “It’s him or me” had only softened the feeling.

“Why?” wailed Jane. “How can you just go for a walk at a time like this?!”

“Because we’re all too upset,” said Bruce. Ironically, his voice was calm. Rationale for what he wanted to do leapt into his brain. “We just need to get a breath. Mindy’s too upset. This stress can’t be good for the baby.”

That sent Jane back into maternal mode and, while her attention was centered on Mindy, Bruce dragged Bobby out of the room. It was cold, but he took his son outside anyway. “Cold,” at this point, was a minor irritant. As soon as he closed the front door, he turned to Bobby.

“What happened?” he asked, still calmly. “And this time, no bullshit.”

Maybe it was the fact that his father had gotten so calm that reached into Bob’s psyche. His dad had always been like a rock, unruffled and firm, someone he could count on. Right now Bobby craved for things to feel normal again. Maybe it was because he just couldn’t keep it buried inside him any longer, and confessing top his father didn’t feel as dangerous as telling someone else.

“I saw them come out of a practice room at the opera house. He had done something to her. Like hypnosis or something. He took her to a motel room,” said Bobby. “Her face looked like she was a zombie, just staring. He was telling her he was going to have sex with her and that she would be his slave. He made her take her clothes off and when he got on top of her, I went in and grabbed him. I got him in a choke hold and ... I guess I held it too long.”

There. It was out. A feeling swept through him that was unfamiliar. He had never smoked weed, like some others he knew, so he didn’t identify it as a “rush.” His high came down almost instantly, though.

“I didn’t mean to murder the guy. I just wanted to stop him.” Bobby reached for something else to justify his actions. He thought of the wand, but couldn’t talk about that. His father believed him, thus far, but if he talked about the wand, that could all go to shit. “He had a weapon,” said Bobby, instead.

Bruce’s mind was firing on all cylinders. He’d been prepared to hear something terrible, but if Bobby was telling the truth - and Bruce desperately wanted it to be the truth - then things weren’t as bad as he’d feared.