Jenna got between her father and Brody. Her red hair was like a flag, and the only color to be distinguished in the yard lit by lanterns. She was not trying to stop her father but trying to protect Brody. Her choice spurred Tommy Harding into a fury. And it was as if some silent call had gone out. Suddenly, nearly half a dozen men, including Jenna’s former boyfriend, were rushing Brody. They surrounded him, tackling him to the ground.
I heard them calling Brody every dirty word and name they could utter.
“Call the cops. Call the cops!”
It was my own voice I heard, disembodied and shrill. I wanted to make them stop, but I was terrified of the men turning on me as well. No one went to Brody’s aid, and Jenna was wrenched from his side. Once again, he was on his own. He didn’t belong on City Island, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get a chance to be with Jenna Harding.
I don’t remember hearing police sirens. But the fight had lost its momentum and the men were weary. I couldn’t see Brody, but I knew I had to get out of there. Fear took over. I stepped over the debris that was now the backyard. The birthday cake had been smashed and destroyed, the colorful frosting a globby mess on the ground.
Jenna was crying hysterically and being comforted by her mother, but she kept calling out Brody’s name. Her father was slouched on a step at the back of the house. Another man sat bent over on the tree stump that minutes ago held the birthday cake. Brody was on his knees, silently hunched over and motionless. Two men stood over him, as if daring him to get up. Finally, I took a hesitant step toward Brody, but someone stood in my way to prevent my passage.
“It’s all over. Go home. There’s nothing to see. Just go home.”
“Brody? Come on. Get up. Let’s get out of here,” I heard my own trembling voice.
“Don’t worry about him. We’ll see that he gets home. It was a fight and now it’s over.”
“But he didn’t start it,” I said.
The man got right in my face. “Go… home.”
I hung around outside, shivering not from the night air but from having watched Brody outnumbered by five or six able-bodied men. There were still a couple dozen partygoers hanging around. I waited for Brody to come out so we could head back into the city together.
Maybe twenty minutes later a police car ambled its way up the street. The two officers got out and approached the house as if they were just stopping by for a friendly cup of coffee. No rush to see if a teen named Brody Miller was hurt and maybe needed an ambulance.
I decided that Brody would probably be okay.
I went home.
Jenna was not in school the entire next week. Neither was Brody. The talk was not about the ruined birthday party but about the fight, and Brody getting his ass kicked. There was also talk that Brody and Jenna had run off together. I preferred that story to the one that kept playing in my mind.
Jen returned, sullen and standoffish, for the last three weeks of school, and finally graduation. She had nothing to say about anything, except that she and Brody had broken up.
Okay, I could see that happening. She wasn’t going to defy her own father. She wasn’t going to take a risk, or stand up for what she believed or what she wanted. I can’t say if that was a mistake, but it was certainly her loss.
I, for one, never saw Brody again.
It was years before I thought I’d figured out what happened to Brody Miller. I couldn’t tell Jenna. Anyway, I kind of lost touch with her a few years after we graduated. Once I did ask her, flat out, if she ever heard from Brody. She said, simply, no. End of conversation. I heard that someone contacted his group home supervisor only to be told that Brody was no longer there. He was past being a minor, a ward of the state, and if he chose to take off without telling anyone, he had the right.
Jenna and I drifted further apart. What used to hold us together no longer existed. I guess that was as much by choice as it was by circumstance. I know now that you have to work at the things you want, like friendship or love. She landed a job at a law firm in New York. I finished college and returned home. Then one day I realized that I had never returned to the island since the night of Jenna’s birthday party. But that was also the start of some not-so-far-fetched thoughts that wouldn’t go away.
Like believing that Tommy Harding and his friends had killed Brody Miller that night and buried him in the Harding’s backyard.
After a while it didn’t even seem so crazy an idea. I’d already witnessed some of the terrible things people were capable of doing to each other, all to protect themselves, their families, their homes… or in the name of God.
Then, one day, I took a bus back to City Island, getting off the first stop outside a restaurant called the Sea Shore. That was as far as I got. I made myself sick wondering, What if I’m right? What if Jenna’s father goes to jail? What if her family is forced to sell their home, and they leave the island in disgrace? What if Jenna hates me? If Brody was really dead, could I be forgiven for catching and turning in his killer, the father of a friend?
But I wasn’t prepared for a full-fledged flashback of the night of the fight, chilling me to the bone on an eighty-degree day. I turned around and caught the next bus off the island. I was shaking like crazy.
It was a year later when I came up with a real plan. I first went to the police precinct that covered City Island and asked about an incident one spring night nearly seven years earlier at the home of one of the residents. The cops made a show of checking old ledgers and computer databases, and said they could find nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing recorded for that Saturday night was an incident involving a small boat that had been stolen by teens and later run aground.
I did a search of newspapers articles and reports for that entire week. Nothing. I kept thinking, Cover-up. Or, had the police arrived to drive Brody off the island, maybe all the way home? But that was part of the problem again. Brody had no home. He’d wanted City Island to be his home. Maybe he’d gotten his wish.
I Googled his name and the date and still got nowhere. But it was more likely that without anyone to champion him, Brody could have met with foul play. Another thing… people vanish all the time. Sometimes, right under our noses.
There was no help for it. I knew I was going to have to go back and see Tommy Harding.
I don’t think I was prepared to learn that Jenna was back, although I’d heard rumors over the years. She was no longer with her parents but in her own place. I couldn’t find her listed in the local directory, so I called the City Island Historical Society, located in a converted school. An elderly voice answered. Of course he knew the Hardings. He also knew nothing of the night that stayed in my memory.
It was a weather perfect day when I next returned. I got off the bus several blocks from the corner where I’d turn to approach the Harding house. I used the walk to look around and found, eerily, that everything seemed pretty much the same as the last time I’d been this far. There was a craft fair in full swing, and the sidewalks were crowded with tables and makeshift booths of local folks selling their stuff. I bypassed it all.
I turned the corner and approached the Harding house. I was caught off guard when I realized that someone was sitting on the tiny porch. It was Tommy Harding in the flesh, alive and well. I stood on the curb and silently stared at him, too struck by warp time to be able to say anything. He leaned forward in his decaying wicker chair.