away, but it didn’t get me. I even went after him, tried to save him, so I
should’ve swum straight into the same current, but I guess it changed course
just after it snatched Harry away, ‘cause I came out of the water alive.” He
stared at the top of the kitchen table for a long moment, seeing not the red
Formica but the rolling, treacherous, blue-green sea. “I loved my big brother
more than anyone in the world.”
Einstein whined softly, as in commiseration.
“Nobody blamed me for what happened to Harry. He was the older one. He was
supposed to be the most responsible. But I felt . . . well, if the undertow took
Harry, it should’ve taken me, too.”
A night wind blew in from the west, rattled a loose windowpane.
After taking a swallow of beer, Travis said, “The summer I was fourteen, I
wanted very badly to go to tennis camp. Tennis was my big enthusiasm then. So my
dad enrolled me in a place down near San Diego, a full month of intense
instruction. He drove me there on a Sunday, but we never made it. Just north of
Oceanside, a trucker fell asleep at the wheel, his rig jumped the median, and we
were wiped. Dad was killed instantly. Broken neck, broken back, skull crushed,
chest caved in. I was in the front seat beside him, and I came out of it with a
few cuts, bruises, and two broken fingers.”
The dog was studying him intently.
“It was just like with Harry. Both of us should have died, my father and me, but
I escaped. And we wouldn’t have been making the damn drive if I hadn’t agitated
like hell about tennis camp. So this time, there was no getting around it. Maybe
I couldn’t be blamed for my mother dying in childbirth, and maybe I couldn’t be
pinned with Harry’s death, but this one . . . Anyway, although I wasn’t always
at fault, it began to be clear that I was jinxed, that it wasn’t safe for people
to get too close to me. When I loved somebody, really loved them, they were sure
as shit going to die.”
Only a child could have been convinced that those tragic events meant he was a
walking curse, but Travis was a child then, only fourteen, and no other
explanation was so neat. He was too young to understand that the mindless
violence of nature and fate often had no meaning that could be ascertained. At
fourteen, he needed meaning in order to cope, so he told himself that he was
cursed, that if he made any close friends he would be sentencing them to early
death. Being somewhat of an introvert to begin with, he found it almost too easy
to turn inward and make do with his own company.
By the time he graduated from college at the age of twenty-one, he was a
confirmed loner, though maturity had given him a healthier perspective On the
deaths of his mother, brother, and father. He no longer consciously thought of
himself as jinxed, no longer blamed himself for what had happened to his family.
He remained an introvert, without close friends, partly because he had lost the
ability to form and nurture intimate relationships and partly
because he figured he could not be shattered by grief if he had no friends to
lose.
“Habit and self-defense kept me emotionally isolated,” he told Einstein.
The dog rose and crossed the few feet of kitchen floor that separated them. It
insinuated itself between his legs and put its head in his lap.
Petting Einstein, Travis said, “Had no idea what I wanted to do after college,
and there was a military draft then, so I joined up before they could call me.
Chose the army. Special Forces. Liked it. Maybe because . . . well, there was a
sense of camaraderie, and I was forced to make friends. See, I pretended not to
want close ties with anyone, but I must have because I put myself in a situation
where it was inevitable. Decided to make a career out of the service. When Delta