No,” Jessup says. “Don’t lay this on me. You can’t kill somebody and say you did it for me. This is on you, not me.”
“You’ve got to understand,” Wyatt says, his voice quavering, his mouth twitching. “I made a promise.”
“To Brandon?”
Wyatt looks shocked. Like Jessup’s got tentacles sprouting out of his face. Or, Jessup thinks, as if Jessup told him that he was in love with a black girl. “To Brandon? You think I’d care about a promise to Brandon? No, man. Look, I believe in the cause, but just because Brandon is part of it doesn’t mean I owe him anything. Who cares what Brandon thinks? I made a promise to David John.”
“He knew?” Jessup is furious. He doesn’t even realize he’s grabbing Wyatt’s jacket until the fabric is bunched up in his fingers, Wyatt pulled close. But Wyatt doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t push Jessup’s hand away, doesn’t resist. Just meets Jessup’s gaze with peace and love. It deflates Jessup’s anger immediately.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course David John didn’t know,” Wyatt says. He’s clearly asking for forgiveness. Jessup doesn’t let go of the jacket, but he doesn’t do what he knows he should do, which is to wrap his arm around Wyatt and tell him it’s okay, that he trusts him and he loves him, too, that blood doesn’t matter when it comes to brothers.
“He would never have let you out there if he knew about this, never have brought Jewel or your mom. And anyway, you think David John would go along with something like this? That man’s a fucking saint. He might be the best man I’ve ever met. I went to visit him, you know, a couple of times.”
Jessup is stunned. One second he’s thinking of Wyatt as his brother, the next he has to wonder if he knows Wyatt at all. He keeps his fist clenched on Wyatt’s jacket, but he drops his head back, looks at the sky. The promise of snow still waiting to be delivered.
Wyatt’s voice is low, hushed. He says, “You didn’t know that, did you? That I went to visit him?”
Jessup can’t look at him. “In prison?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I didn’t know that.” He swallows. It hurts. “I never did.”
“I know. And I get it, man, but I don’t think you understand. All your dad tried to do was to keep Ricky safe, and—”
Jessup snaps his head down, turns on Wyatt, his voice a hard, quiet fury, pulling the jacket so that Wyatt stumbles into him. “Bullshit. This is his fault.” Says it before he realizes that it is the word “dad” that triggers him. But he’s already going: “All of it. You think Ricky would have been in that alley without David John, that he would have had those tattoos on him, that those . . .” He can feel the word splinter on his lips. Thinks of Deanne. Thinks of Coach Diggins telling him that it’s just a matter of time before the word spills out of him. He can’t say it. “And this, this . . .” He lets go and waves his hand, encompassing Wyatt, the woods, the trail, searching for the right word, fumbling, coming up with nothing better than to say, “. . . all of it. Blessed Church of the White America. This isn’t normal. We might be rednecks, but neither one of us is stupid. You know this place isn’t normal. If it was normal, none of this would have happened.”
“Jessup.” Wyatt meets Jessup’s anger with an equanimity that seems to come from nowhere. It’s the voice and calm of a man who is entirely certain he has done the right thing. “Jessup,” he says again.
Jessup voice is glass. “What?”
“You know I love you. You know that, right?”
Jessup still has Wyatt’s jacket grasped in one hand, and yet Wyatt hasn’t pulled back, not once. Hasn’t tried to separate himself from Jessup. Instead, Wyatt opens his arms, wraps them around Jessup, holds him like the brother he is, and Jessup doesn’t know if Wyatt starts to cry because Jessup is already crying or if Jessup starts to cry because Wyatt is already crying, but it’s just the two of them, the woods, the pond, the sky starting to open, snow beginning to flutter to the ground, the afternoon light dull and gray, nothing but Jessup and Wyatt, brothers holding each other in solace.