Ellie’s eyes turned cloudy. She said, “We share the same blood.”
“Billions of people all over the world have bloodlines that intersect. That’s basic human genealogy. But it doesn’t make you responsible for anyone else, unless you accept the burden to begin with. Having a common ancestor, even a father, doesn’t bind your soul to mine, or vice versa. To think differently is just a primitive form of religion; blood worship, the church of the genetic fallacy.”
She said, “We share the same pain.”
I shook my head resolutely. “No one shares my pain.”
Ellie looked away. Through all my editorializing, I could see the fire inside of her beginning to dim, though her brother appeared to grow more incensed with each new word.
He said, “You’re wrong. God made us to live in families for a reason. Even when there were only two people in the whole world, they lived together as one. That’s the real city of God. That’s what binds us together.”
I edged my way closer to the steps. “Some bond. It’s been fifteen hundred years since Augustine and the city of God is still nothing but a dream. It will never be built. It can’t be built. And if the city of God can’t be built, then the cities of men are all that matter. That’s why I’m leaving here as soon as this contract I’m carrying is signed. I’m going to live a long life and make a lot of money, but first I’m going to move back to the city and build something amazing from the ground up. Finally there will be a Temple worth remembering.”
Ellie wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. She said, “You’ll remember me. You’ll remember me and all the rest of your brothers and sisters. You’ll remember this farm and what you did to us until the day you die. We’ll haunt you, you fancy-ass son of a bitch. We’ll haunt you while we’re still breathing. I swear it.”
“You’re not my sister. Stop pretending.”
“You’re the only one pretending here. You’re so warped you’re even lying to yourself.”
“All right, I’ve heard just about enough from the kids’ section. It’s time for me to talk to the adults now.” I clutched the manila folder close to my side and tried walking past her to ascend the steps. If anything, I expected her to go for the contracts. So it caught me off-guard when she reached up and scraped her short fingernails down the center of my forehead, tearing the sunglasses from my face and leaving me momentarily bewildered. There was no pain at first, only the sudden near-blindness of the sun’s unfiltered rays hitting my corneas for the first time in days. But then I felt the stinging from where her nails had broken skin. I touched my face and my fingers came away red. I whispered, “Little bitch,” under my breath and lunged at her before she could do any more damage.
“What’re you doing? Get off me!”
Getting her to the ground was easy; she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. But once I had her there, wedged between my knee and the porch steps, she proceeded to claw and kick like a feral beast. I had to hold her by the neck just to keep her still. My hands tightened their grip until the flow of air was cut off completely.
I said, “You should have listened. There was no reason for you to make me do this.”
My blood was pumping so fast I was practically seething. Particles of saliva sprayed from my lips and settled over her straining face. She was starting to turn blue when a shadow fell over us and something hard struck the back of my head. I rolled onto my back and lay gasping with Ellie beside me in the inverse position. She coughed hoarsely and held her already bruised throat. The boy came and stood over me with the rifle barrel pointed at my chest and the butt end pressed into his shoulder. I finally noticed the color of his eyes.
He said, “No one would blame me if I pulled the trigger. Not after what you did to her.”
The blow to the head had left my senses scattered; I was having trouble understanding which “her” he was talking about. And as I looked up at the fearsome length of metal being aimed at me, the barrel seemed so close that I imagined I could grab hold of it and wrestle it from the boy’s grip. My thoughts must have been more apparent than I realized, because he caught on almost instantly. He said, “Don’t even try it,” but I wasn’t in the clearest headspace at the time, and his threat only heightened my feeling of resolve.
My fingers brushed the edge of the barrel before he jerked it out of reach. I expected him to fire, to put a bullet so deep inside of me that it would come out the other end through my back. But instead he executed a sort of quick rotating maneuver to bring the butt end around to the front. He struck me with enough force to shatter my nose cartilage and loosen two teeth up top. My head slumped back against the wood, blood trickling down the sides of my face. Before sleep overtook me, I felt Ellie’s feet once more on the steps, and then I saw them both together, girl and boy, sister and brother, standing over me with the most fearful, critical look in their eyes. What I would have said to them, had I been able to speak, was this: that not even our father had been able to make me lose consciousness; that as far as Temples went, they were some pretty gruesome little shits.
Five years is a long time to go without seeing a parent, especially when you’re just a teenager. By the time I managed to track him down, I had grown into full manhood, and Dad had been out of touch with his Porterville friends for quite some time. Kylee put me in contact with one of his old associates, a shipping manager out of Paso Robles, who informed me that Dad had fallen off the map in recent years, and that he hadn’t heard from him personally in the past two or three seasons. He referred me instead to a grower in Turlock, who in turn gave me the number of a boarding house in Modesto. A woman with an almost unintelligible country twang answered and went on for ten minutes about what a gentleman he had been before finally admitting that she hadn’t seen him in over a year and didn’t know how to get a hold of him. It didn’t frustrate me, hitting a dead end. I figured Dad probably kept tabs on the various circles he ran in, and that eventually word would reach him that someone claiming to be his son was looking for him. Sure enough, he called me up one evening on the same number I had given the guy from Turlock. Hearing his voice for the first time since our altercation, I wasn’t sure if he had grown gentler in middle age, or if my memory of him was distorted by my sense of victimhood.
He said, “This call has been a long time coming, son. That’s my fault as much as yours. I’d like to see you if you’re willing. Thought that might have been why you were hunting me.”
I counted down five seconds and said, “You’re right, Dad. I do want to see you. That’s part of why I came back to San Joaquin. To have a talk.”
“You say you’re in the valley?”
“In Porterville. At the place where you bought me my very first drink.” I waited through the silence, convinced that Dad would speak again whenever he was ready to do so. But as the seconds counted down without so much as a loud breath from his end, I finally accepted the possibility that we might have been disconnected. “Dad? Hello?”
“I’m here. Just thinking. I got into an argument with the manager the last time I was down there. Afraid I may have burnt that bridge. If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind coming up to San Jose tomorrow? That’s where I’m living now. That’s my base of operations.”