The record keeper, p.6
The Record Keeper, page 6
I had grown up a few islands south on a small pitch of land adjacent to Fort George Island. It, too, is not really an island. But it was there, during one summer of my childhood, that I’d met Marie and shown her my secret island just across the Fort George River. Beneath a cathedral of majestic oaks, I’d walked her through the ruins of the chapel that I would later rebuild and watched in wonder as she ran her fingers across the grooves of the names and dates carved into the walls, coming to realize that those who’d etched their names into the tabby had known freedom there. That island had been a declaration. A stake driven into the surface of the earth. Both an ending and a beginning. Above the names, someone had carved, “Even the Rocks Cry Out.” And they did. I remember walking home late that summer, holding her hand as we stood in the knee-deep water where I told her I was going to buy that island.
And I did.
In the following summers, we’d found megalodon sharks’ teeth and spent our days digging to China. When sweat and innocence were all we knew. It was there, digging one afternoon, that I’d come upon the grave of what I had to assume was a Native American. He’d been encased in what today we would call coquina. A combination of shell and cement. The Indians made their own version, not quite as stout, but strong enough to preserve the body.
I don’t know how he’d died. His bones were all intact and he’d been buried wearing something on his head, a fishhook in one hand, a small knife in the other, with a rather primitive bow and arrows lying across his chest. The bow was well worn, maybe three feet long, and the string must have been something like catgut. It was very tough and spun, or twisted, to stretch and thin it. The arrows were surprisingly straight and flint-tipped. Sharp enough to penetrate hide. They had been fletched with what looked to be feathers that had disintegrated over time.
When we’d found him, we pulled away the rocks, uncovering him but not disturbing his rest beyond that. We didn’t poke at him. Didn’t lift him. Didn’t steal anything. We just sat staring at him. A warrior from another age. I don’t know if he was young or old, but I’d always hoped he had been old. In my mind my island had once been his island. I’d like to think we shared that in common. Maybe he liked to fish like me. Late that afternoon, we quietly covered him back up. Returning the stones. To make sure the dirt held in place and wouldn’t erode too quickly, we transplanted several ferns and two lemon and two lime trees to mark the four corners. Citrus trees covered my island, and they had to have come from somewhere. Given the fact that the warrior still had many of his teeth, I wondered if citrus had been a staple in his diet. Whatever the case, it was a staple now as the four trees literally stapled the corners of his grave into the earth. A fitting tribute, we thought.
In the months that passed, the memory of that old guy would return to me. Especially the image of him holding that bow. The way his fingers rested on it. That winter, I began researching handmade bows and made several, learning quickly it’s more difficult than it looks—that some people are blessed with that creative gene and I was not one of them. So I bought a recurve. Then another. Soon I gravitated to compound bows. First Bear. Then Mathews. I became fascinated with them. A bow is simply stored energy. That’s all. Somewhere in the riser, limbs, and string, energy is held, and when called upon—or when the string is pulled back—all that energy is released. If an arrow is nocked to the string, then the energy is transferred to the arrow, sending it downrange. If no arrow, the energy is returned back into the limbs, where it usually cracks them.
Some bows harness energy better and with more consistency than others. Better replication. Better multiplication. Mathews does this maybe better than anyone. But no matter how sophisticated, at the end of the day, a bow creates energy that is transferred to a stick of some sort. Filled with that energy, the stick is propelled forward at three hundred–plus feet per second and will fly several hundred yards if angled correctly. I shot them through high school and during my time at the Academy. When Bones found me, I would later capitalize on my own affection for archery and use its benefits in our rescue missions. While primitive, a bow is quiet—and quiet mixed with deadly is often vital to survival.
In the first two decades of working with Bones, I’d collected dozens of bows and arrows from different countries and continents. Each had its own personality and use and context and culture, and each was designed in a unique way. But no matter how different they might be, they were all the same in one regard: they stored energy until called upon. Energy that could be replicated. Indefinitely. Or at least until you got tired of pulling back the string. I carried them back from all corners of the globe and hung them in neat rows along the chapel wall on my island. Just feet from where my Native American friend was buried. Of course, that was before someone blew up my island. And me.
Standing in the demon boat, the scar tissue on my back and stomach roared to life. A searing hot poker. I guess my wrestling match with the gorilla in this same boat thirty-six hours prior had stretched or torn it. Whatever the case, the pain reminded me of the bolt that had sliced through me. That someone had sent through me. With intention to hurt and kill me.
While regular bows store energy well, a crossbow stores it extremely well, often in a smaller package. The discomfort returned my thoughts to what started this mess in the first place. And to the fact that it wasn’t over. While the adrenaline of yesterday had dumped and faded, we were no closer to finding who blew up my island, who blew up Freetown, who kidnapped the girls, and who shot me.
Gunner stood alongside me, letting the wind pull at his ears and tongue. Bones pushed the throttle forward half, and within seconds we were traveling 93 mph. It was hands down the finest vessel I’d ever been aboard.
We returned across the mouth of the Altahama, around Wolf Island and Queens Island and across the Doboy Sound where the land curves northeast along the shoulders of Sapelo Island and the Blackbeard Island National Wildlife Refuge. On the north end of the refuge, we turned west into the Sapelo Sound and up the Sapelo River, running along the western side of St. Catherines Island. Bones navigated with an uncanny knowledge, putting the large vessel in skinny waters I’d not thought possible. He was threading the needle between oyster bed and sandbar and doing so at a fast rate of speed. When he did throttle down and brought us off plane, I found myself looking at a protective high bluff canopied in ancient live oaks, all draped in Spanish moss.
Bones cut the engine, and we tied up at what was once a dock. He looked over his shoulder. “Feel like walking?”
Some hurricane had long ago separated dock from land, so we hopped down onto the beach. Bones led, leaving an imprint in the soft sand much like the one he’d left in most everyone who’d ever met him. Something that lingered.
I followed. Something I’d been doing for close to twenty-five years.
He kept most of his equipment in pristine condition, especially his weapons, routinely trading old for new. Never letting the possibility of age-assisted failure—or what I’d call worn-out stuff—limit his ability on a mission. But the same could not be said of his boots. This pair was nearing a decade old, just a few months from needing a third resole, and there’s no telling how many times they and he had climbed to the Eagle’s Nest. At the Academy, he had told me that boots were like a warm blanket on a snow-swept night. They provided comfort when little else did. He also said that about his Sig.
As I wound along behind him, his imprint in the sand had not changed. Slightly worn on the outside of the heel, suggesting slight pronation. He was still very much a heel-to-toe runner while I was more midfoot-to-toe. And while we wore the same size 12, I did not fill his prints.
We climbed the bluff and stood staring. Me across a beautiful landscape and Bones back into what I would soon learn was a painful history. Knowing he had brought me up here for a reason, I tried to jump-start the conversation. “Something on your mind?”
Bones scratched his chin. “Did you know the first sin outside the garden was one brother killing another?”
I nodded, not quite sure where this was going.
He continued to press his question. “Does that strike you as strange? I mean, really. Brothers.”
Gunner walked in circles around me. Sniffing everything. And peeing on everything else. “Given my experience with you, not really.”
He spoke matter-of-factly. “As best I can determine, my brother is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for kidnapping and attempting to traffic Angel; kidnapping Summer; blowing up Freetown, your island, your boat, and you; kidnapping the girls; and shooting you with your own crossbow. Although I doubt he actually pulled the trigger. Probably paid someone instead. It’s not that he’s unwilling to get his hands dirty. At this point in his life, they’re permanently stained. It’s just that he seldom ventures out. Oh, and that head count doesn’t begin to include the more than one hundred names now inscribed on your back that at one time belonged to him.”
It struck me as strange that Bones would have anything to do with someone so evil. One hundred names was more than a third of the two hundred fifty. That meant his brother had been personally responsible for much.
“You actually grew up with this jackwagon?”
“Shared the womb.”
That explained why the bad guy looked so familiar in Montana. “He’s your twin?!”
“Came out first.”
“This just keeps getting better.” We continued moving through the trees. “When were you going to tell me this?”
“Figured it would come up at some point.”
“You didn’t think I needed this information prior to this moment?”
“I planned to tell you when you needed to know.”
“Which was?”
He checked his watch. “Right about now.”
“Have you lost your ever-loving—”
He cut me off. “It wouldn’t change anything.”
“Of course it—”
His tone changed and pain echoed beneath the surface. He shook his head once. “Bishop . . . he’s not like you. Or me.”
Bones rarely called me by my real name. When he did, he was trying to get my attention. Or make a point. Usually both. “Then why in the world did you pluck me out of the Academy to take on trafficking if you’re not going to tell me who the bad guy is?”
“I didn’t choose you to take on trafficking.”
“What?”
“Trafficking’s part of it.” Bones was resolute. “I chose you to find lost sheep and kill wolves.”
“One of whom just happens to be your brother.”
A painful nod. “Correct.”
“Before we go any further, have you got any more secrets I need to know about?”
“No.” He chuckled. “Between Marie and Frank, I’ve kept all the secrets I want for one lifetime.”
“Frank?”
“Yep.”
“That’s his name? I was thinking it was something more like Adolf or Osama.”
“Well . . . that’s the name the priests gave him. It’s short for Francis. As in Saint Francis, which always struck me as comical.”
“What’s his real name?”
Bones shook his head once and chuckled again. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been asking me the same thing for most of his life.”
Bones saw the confused look on my face and decided he’d back up and start from the beginning. “For a long time Frank and I didn’t know where we came from. Who bore us. Or where. We knew nothing. Only when I went to work for the government was I able to do some digging and discover bits and pieces. Even now, we don’t know our real names.”
“But what about birth certificates?”
“According to record, Frank and I were born to a single mother”—he pointed—“in a trailer a few miles that way. From what we can piece together, which included more than one arrest for prostitution, Mom was trying to pay the bills and got us in the process, proving there’s a blurry line between prostitution and trafficking. Local paper said she died the week after our birth with a needle stuck in her arm and enough heroin to kill a cow.
“From the hospital nursery, a nearby parish priest and his wife took us in. Good people. Faithful. Kind. He had a small rural church and even smaller flock, but unlike many who preach it, he actually believed and did what he read. She played piano and I have faint memories of hymns echoing off pine walls, of Frank singing and laughing, a fireplace, and a stained glass window depicting, I think, the story of the prodigal. I also think I remember the sound of church bells. Even today, real bells are the sound of home.”
That would explain why he had them installed in Freetown. We turned a corner around a row of trees and the remains of a building came into view. Surrounded by hedges, pierced by trees, choked with vines, and with a tower that had caved in on itself, the small formerly white structure suggested it had once been a church. All the windows were gone, most of the roof had rotted, and the porch had become disconnected from the building, causing those who would enter to jump across a three-foot chasm.
Bones and I climbed the stone steps onto an uneven porch and through where the front door, now missing, had hung. Like the roof, the floor had rotted and taken many of the pews down with it. Three remained. The others sat at odd angles, having disappeared through the floorboards like sinking ships in a sea of ice. Bones sat staring at the wall where the altar had once stood. He pointed at the nail holes. “I think there was a cross.”
The sound of creaking boards flushed out several pigeons and sent two cats and one opossum scurrying. Judging by the droppings on the floor, this place had rats aplenty.
Bones sat running his fingers across a well-worn, hand-oiled pew. “Frank and I stayed here, I think, with this man and his wife until maybe five or six.” Bones paused and sucked through his teeth. “Memory is tough to recall when doing so brings pain. Not long after, he, too, died, and the church”—he gestured to where the other pews would have sat—“figuring it wasn’t worth the effort or they’d never find another who would put forth the effort, closed the parish, condemned the property, and moved us from the safety of the only warm bosom we’d ever known to the cold, frigid, and very infertile womb of an upstate New York convent. Upon his death, his wife returned home to New York, but the trail grows cold at an asylum. I’d like to think she was heartbroken. Evidently we were taken from her when she could no longer care for us.”
He paused and shook his head. “When I sit here, something in me breathes more deeply than anywhere else on the planet, causing me to think my roots must sink into and out of this earth.” For several minutes he sat breathing. “The property has changed hands several times, selling years ago off the courthouse steps. A company out of New York bought it. At the time, there were rumors of an uber-elite waterfront golf community.”
Finally, he stood and wound his way to a back door. We stepped beneath limbs and through vines. Once outside, we walked into a larger canopy of even older oaks whose limbs arched up, turned horizontal like a roller coaster, then swooped down to kiss the earth, only to rise up again. He pointed north. “The convent was the first place I ever knew, or experienced, favoritism. Of the two of us, Frank has always been better looking. So if someone gave us a turn on the swing or handed us a toy, they chose him first. He had then, and has now, a presence that draws people. A magnetism. Somewhere near the age of six they moved us to an orphanage. Run by priests. And while the nuns favored Frank, the priests favored me—but for different reasons. It was the first time I remember knowing cold. And pain.”
He paused.
When he continued, his voice had softened and he spoke as much to himself as to me. “If you don’t know something is wrong, and don’t know what to call it, and if it’s all you’ve ever known, then it’s difficult to know for certain that it shouldn’t be happening to you. I once explained abuse like growing up in a world without hot water. If cold was all you ever knew, then a cold shower was normal. All you ever took. You had no choice. That doesn’t mean you liked it, but you didn’t complain. You could imagine something else, but what good would it do? The dial you were given read On-Off, not Warm-Cold.” Bones sipped from his water bottle and then offered me some. “So a cold life with these men who called themselves servants of God was all we knew. Until . . . we must have been seven. Maybe eight. They made us serve as acolytes. White robes. Reverent faces. We’d sit up front, holding a cross or candle, staring out across the congregation, and over time, familiar faces began to register. As in, we recognized them. Which is the thing about physical abuse. It’s face-to-face. These were men of standing, successful, powerful, who bought what they wanted, when they wanted. Sitting properly next to their wives and kids. Completing the act. But our bodies told a different drama. Our bodies were keeping score.
“During Communion, the priest would offer the body—the wafer—to the penitent, along with a whisper detailing time and place.” Bones shook his head and stared at his right hand. “Took me a long time to understand how they offered the body of Christ with one hand and us with the other.” Another long pause. “Of the two of us, I was stronger. When I rebelled, they beat me until I couldn’t.”
A longer pause.
“As soon as we were able, Frank and I gravitated to sports. Wrestling. Weight lifting. Track. Soccer. Anything to get us outside and make us stronger and faster. Somewhere in there I learned the value of a push-up and pull-up. And I did them by the hundreds. Then the thousands.”
Even today, Bones could rattle off fifty to sixty pull-ups without stopping.
