The Sword and the Scythe

Chapter 13: Drink You Away

By the end of the day, they made it to Leroy's safe house outside Flagstaff. Charlotte didn't quite know what she was expecting, but this wasn't it. The property had a lot of empty acres of land, tucked out away from the highway and other residential areas. The yellow paint was a little faded, but the white trim on the eaves and the wraparound porch looked almost new. Charlotte took Leroy's key and opened the house. Though it was musty and far too hot, the inside was clean. Charlotte opened the downstairs windows, and the fresh air flowing through the house helped clear out the smell before she shut them up again and turned on the ancient-looking air conditioner, praying that it would work. She grabbed her bags and headed to the stairs. Through the window she could see that Leroy was still hovering outside by the car, holding his suitcase in his hand, but not moving.

"Does it matter which bedroom I take?" She called out to him.

"Take any of them. Doesn't matter to me."

She picked one of the bedrooms at random and began unpacking her few clothes into the old mirror-topped dresser. The mirror was gilded and a bit gaudy and the drawer pulls were crystal. The bed was an old turn-of-the-century iron post bed, the white paint chipping. But the bright, multi-colored tie-dyed comforter looked like it was from the sixties. The floral curtains in the window looked to be from some decade in between.

Having unpacked, she decided to go downstairs because the air conditioning hadn't done anything to cool the stifling top floor yet. On her way, she passed Leroy unpacking his things in another sparse bedroom with mismatched furniture. His hunched shoulders worried her—he seemed unhappy even though it had been his idea to come here. She wondered if it was just the weather.

The couch in the living room and matching armchair were a bright orange velvet that was so ugly she figured it could only be from the seventies. The early-2000s television was set up in a wooden entertainment set with shelving that included an old-school VCR/DVD player and a sound system with slots for both CD and cassette tapes. In the corner to the left was an old phonograph player with a green conical speaker.

In the back of the room were four bookshelves. One was filled with books, another with movies on VHS and DVD, the third with records on vinyl, and the last shelf was filled with picture frames and trinkets. Charlotte skipped the other shelves and went right for the pictures. Scattered across the shelves were items that seemed random to her. There were a few toys that looked like antiques, a model of an early bi-level airplane, and smaller things like compact mirrors and jewelry. The photos on the shelves were from a bunch of different time periods. There were a few of Leroy with celebrities over several decades including Kevin Bacon, Bon Jovi, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis. In another, he sat on the curb outside the Chinese Theater in LA wearing nineties grunge fashion. There were even old black and white portraits of him in two different soldier uniforms—the exact portrait of a clean-cut young soldier she'd been talking about before.

The photos that most intrigued her were of a dark-haired boy that looked just like Leroy. There were photos of the boy as a baby and as a toddler on a pony. Photos of him and Leroy sitting in a lush backyard, at Christmas, at an airfield where the boy carried one of the model airplanes from the shelves. There was another picture of the boy as a teenager at the same airfield wearing an over-sized bomber jacket and another of him on a dock holding up a large fish.

"Who is he?" Charlotte asked as she heard Leroy's steps creaking the old wooden floorboards as he came downstairs. "Your little brother or something?"

"Or something." He replied, a pained look on his face. "That's Danny. He...he was my son."

"Wow." She said, trying not to sound too nosy. "I cannot picture you as a father. No offense."