Dick’s right foot wants to ease up as he drives past Otis’s house, but he forces the speedometer to hold at twenty-five. Campton Street is unchanged from four days ago. The heat is still oppressive, causing ripples to rise from the asphalt. Bundles of scrub still randomly blow about with no particular destination. The American flag outside the Brady house is raised. It will be lowered when the sun goes down. Mrs. Bronson sits on her porch as she always does in the early afternoon, knitting blue yarn, what she knits and for who a perpetual mystery. And Otis’s black car is parked in its usual spot in his driveway, a fine dust settled on its glossy black enamel, thick enough for someone to have scrawled, “wash me” on the back window. Four newspapers are strewn on the walk, and patches of brown grass scar the yellowing lawn.
Dick’s hand clenches the steering wheel, and a lump closes his throat as he continues past and parks in Dee’s driveway.
Jaw locked forward, stiltedly he walks to the door. His fingers fumble with the key, and finally he manages to get it in the lock and pushes inside. Sliding down the wood to the floor, he drops his head to his knees. Though he believed it could be true, the weight of what he’s done hadn’t fully hit him. Otis is dead. Gone. No longer part of this world. And he’s the one who caused it.
He pulls a deep shuddering breath through his nose, as a sickly swirl of relief and guilt roils in his gut—his relationship with Otis complicated. Few remember the man he was before he turned into the vile person he became. But Dick does. There was a time when he even considered Otis a friend and when he and his dad owed Otis a great deal.
When Dick’s mom got sick, Otis, as a neighborly kindness, would bring the groceries. Once a week, he came by with bags of the things Dick’s mom had carefully listed on the lined pad she kept in the drawer of the side table beside the couch. And when she could no longer stand for long periods, he stayed to help Dick put them away.
The cancer Dick’s mom had was an aggressive form of brain cancer. With treatment, she might have lived five years, but the fetus would have needed to be aborted. Without it, the hope was she would make it long enough for Dee to survive. For his mom, it wasn’t a choice.
A week before baseball season started, Otis asked Dick if he wanted to watch the opening game on his mom’s new television. Dick was excited. He liked Otis, and it was a whole lot more fun watching baseball with a fellow fan than alone.
He showed up wearing the Giants T-shirt he’d gotten from his mom for his birthday two months earlier. Otis opened the door to let him in, and past him, Dick could see the flickering screen on the new television, the colors more vivid than life.
“Dickie!” his mom called from their house as he stepped toward it.
He pretended not to hear.
“I think Gausman’s starting for the Giants,” Otis said.
Gausman was one of Dick’s favorites, a hard-throwing righty with a nasty slider. Dick stepped past him, and Otis started to close the door, but Dickie’s hand shot out to stop it.
“What?” Otis said.
Dick stepped back and cocked his head, his ears straining.
The national anthem was being sung on the television, but other than that, the world was quiet.
She hadn’t called again. His mother always repeated herself. She said things twice. Dickie, turn off the radio. Dickie, you need to turn that off.
He stepped back outside and turned toward his house, a moment that will live forever.
Otis, recognizing something was wrong, stepped outside as well, walking onto the stoop at the exact moment Dick took off running.
They reached his mom together, both of them dropping to their knees beside her collapsed body. Her thin maternity dress was hiked up around her legs, and her eyes were rolled back in her head, a sliver of white showing between the lids.
“Dickie, get Mrs. Bronson,” Otis said as he rolled Dick’s mom onto her back, then pinched his mom’s nose and blew a breath into her mouth.
Dick stood frozen.
“Now!” Otis barked, and Dick took off for the house next door.
When Dick returned with Mrs. Bronson, Otis was still breathing life into his mom, sweat dripping down his stubbled face and soaked through his shirt.
He panted and swore between sets, “Breathe. Damn it, Mrs. Raynes, breathe.”
Mrs. Bronson held Dick against her bony ribs, her knotted hands on his shoulders.
The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and took his mom away. Otis led Dick to his truck, and they followed.
Dee came into the world via C-section, while their mother lived suspended between worlds by a ventilator.
Otis never left Dick’s side. Even after Dick’s dad got to the hospital, he stayed. He went to the cafeteria and got Dick food and, when it was late, got a pillow and blanket from the nurse so Dick could lie down.
Dick doesn’t remember Otis saying much, but he remembers clear as day what his dad said when he finally came into the waiting room. His normally proud shoulders were stooped and his ruddy face colorless. Dick sat up groggy, and Otis stood and accepted his dad’s outstretched hand.
“Otis.” Dick’s dad’s voice, always soft, was barely a rasp. “Thank you. You saved her.”
Otis’s face lit up. “She’s going to be okay?”
Dick’s dad’s eyes dropped. “Not her. You saved the baby.”
Dee turned twenty-nine last month, and Dick doubts anyone, other than him, even knows the story. He swipes the tears that have escaped from his face and forces himself to his feet. His mother’s final act was saving him from a fate he has nightmares about. And, in a twisted cosmic turn, she also saved her unborn daughter who, seventeen years later, would be the one to send Otis to prison.
He drives out of Independence and, at the first rest area, stops and uses the pay phone.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“There’s a dead man at 2262 Campton Street in Independence.”
The operator starts to ask a question, but he’s already placing the receiver in its cradle.