"And he’s okay? You’re both okay?"
"I think so."
"I’m sorry you had to—"
"I left you stuck in that trap on Portsmouth. My fault."
Rufus had been roasting a marshmallow over the remnants of the glowing charcoal. He glanced back at us and said, "Who’s up for some s’mores?"
"None for me," Vi said.
"Andy?"
"I’m full."
"Alrighty then. More for me."
He lifted the flaming marshmallow out of the grill and joined it with the graham cracker and Hershey square. When the s’more was assembled, Rufus strolled over with his dessert and plopped down beside me in Luther’s lawn chair. He took a large bite and groaned with pleasure.
"Tell you what, Andy," he said, a string of marshmallow dangling from his bottom lip, "tomorrow’s either going to be the very best or very worst day of your life. Goes for you, too, little lady."
"Rufus, you’ve got some marshmallow on your face," I said.
As he wiped his mouth, I gazed down at Luther, sitting at the end of the dock, staring off into the cooling darkness.
"Tell me about Orson," I said.
Rufus beamed proudly, as if I’d inquired after one of his children.
"You think you made him into that monster, don’t you? Well, I hate to piss in your coffee, but my brother was fucked-up long before he ever met you."
Rufus laughed and laughed.
"What’s funny?"
"I think I know where you’re going with this, Andy. You’re on the verge of telling me how Orson was raped when he was twelve. And you, too, perhaps. Did he include you in that fantasy?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You can imagine how guilty your brother felt at first, in light of the things I asked him to do. I was afraid he’d kill himself. So I sat him down one day, said, ‘you were raped when you were a child.’
"He looked at me like I had four heads. I told him, I said, ‘Imagine how good it would feel if you could hurt people the way you like to, and it wasn’t your fault. If you only did these terrible things because someone hurt you a long time ago.’ I didn’t think he’d go for it, but he got this sly little grin—I’m sure you know the expression—and he told me the story of, ah, what was his name? Oh, yes. Willard Bass."
"You’re a liar."
"Andy, Mr. Bass did exist. And he was found dead in a tunnel under the interstate behind your house when you were twelve years old. But he didn’t rape you. He was just a homeless drunk. You and Orson, you never even saw him. You only glimpsed the policemen running through your backyard on the Fourth of July, the day they found his body. I have the newspaper article somewhere in the library if you’d like to read it."
I reached into my shorts, whipped out my dick.
The old man’s eyes widened.
I pointed at the head.
"That scar is from a cigarette. I branded myself after that fucker burned Orson."
"No, that’s a birthmark. Orson had one, too. It was his idea that the man burned his penis with a cigarette afterward. How imaginative, him including you in all this. You really bought it, didn’t you?"
I pulled my shorts back up, head swimming.
"What interests me most of all," Rufus continued, "is that you’re upset your brother wasn’t raped. That you need the comfort of knowing something awful made Orson what he was, you what you are. It’d be the end of the fucking world if someone were evil, purely from their own stock, own volition, and no external influence was to blame. I think that would truly frighten you."
"If Willard didn’t, then you happened to Orson. I know you made him do terrible things."
"But I didn’t make him love it."
Rufus took another bite of the s’more and wiped his mouth. I heard Maxine washing dishes in the kitchen. Vi gazed down at her son.
"About Orson’s journal," I said. "You told me Luther never attended Woodside College. That Orson never kidnapped him. Why would Orson make that up?"
"I’m afraid your brother was fantasizing again. He did take Luther to the desert ten years ago, but only because I asked him to. Toward the end, I think he wanted to feel that he was his own man. It injured his pride that he was such a pussycat before I found him. That it took me to show him who he was. But all in all, Andy, considering the journal and Willard Bass, I’d say Orson’s imagination is a helluva lot more vibrant than yours. And you’re supposed to be the writer."
Rufus stood up and plucked a pipe from the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt.
"I have to tell you though, Andy," he said, glancing over his shoulder at his son at the end of the dock, "Luther and Orson are ultimately failures. Evil is something to be overcome and redefined. It overcame them. Orson was torn between his love of blood and his self-hate. My boy," Rufus sighed, "has only a love of blood. It’s the great sadness of my life. I love the Great Regression for what comes after it. Luther loves it for the warfare, and he would have it go on without end. Do you see what I’m saying?"
I nodded, because surprisingly I did. In that moment, the philosophy of Rufus Kite made perfect, terrifying sense. Not that I sympathized. I just…understood.
Vi said, "What fucked you up, Rufus?"
He took the pipe out of his mouth and howled with laughter.
"Little lady, I was raised by loving, God-fearing parents. Worst thing ever to happen to me was my cocker spaniel, Rusty, getting mange when I was fourteen. Broke my heart."
"But what made you into this—"
"Violet, I’m not the product of abuse, molestation, neglect, abandonment, mental disease, pick your excuse. The things I believe and do are the result of a man who has looked unflinchingly at the human heart and rid himself of the lies he’s been told about it."
"There’s no goodness left in you?"
"God, I hope not. Goodness? I should wish for goodness? Morality is not man’s Godlike quality. The search and acquisition of truth is. You think God’s moral? He’s beyond moral. He created the concept. Made the rules you play by. I reject those rules because I have free will, because I have that kind of vision. I’m starting a new game."
Baby Max had dozed off. Now he stirred, eyes rolling around in his sockets like shiny ball bearings. Rufus knelt down and grinned at the infant, stroking his ancient crooked finger against the silky cheek.
"Max," he said, "a self-centered, mercurial little monster. I love it. He hasn’t been brainwashed with your morality yet. He’s an original thinker, more Godlike than we’ll ever be, until mommy and daddy poison him with notions of right and wrong."
Rufus rose, started for the backdoor.
"If there was no right or wrong," Vi called after him, "this world would implode. We’d all kill each other. There’d be no one left."
He glanced back.
"A few would survive. And they’d be the creators. I’m sorry you don’t understand."
Rufus disappeared into the house.
Luther still sat motionless at the end of the dock.
Vi reached over, took hold of my hand.
We were quiet for awhile. I tried to see my brother in the new light of him never having been raped. Tried to flush the taste of Willard Bass from my mouth.
"Did that woman on the boat, Beth, have children?" Vi asked.
"Two," I said.
Vi shook her head. "I can’t believe she didn’t…"
"I know. But don’t pity her, Vi. Envy is the appropriate emotion. You have no idea what tomorrow will be like. If you and Max live through it, you won’t be the same person who’s sitting beside me tonight."
Maxine emerged from the house and walked down through the grass toward our colony of lawn chairs.
She stopped beside Vi’s chair, knelt down, and swiped the baby out of her arms.
"No!" Vi screamed, jerking against the chain. "What are you doing?"