Page 79 of Infinite

Hale

I stare at my childhood home for what seems like too long. The wraparound porch is exactly that, curving around the modern Victorian as if hugging its beauty and refusing to let go.

My brothers, Daddy, and me spent the entire summer before my sophomore year of high school building that thing. It was a brutal summer, as far as summers here go. The ocean is less than a mile away. During the summers, the breeze skimming along the water does a lot to cool the harsh sun painting our skin a deep gold and soaking our skin with sweat. But not that summer. It was like the breeze took a vacation, leaving our skin to bake with the permanent taste of salt on our lips.

The sun bleached my hair almost white that summer. But it left my brothers’ hair alone. Back then, I attributed it to the baseball caps they wore. Except, back then, I was still mostly in the dark. I knew I was a little different. In the way I looked and in the way I carried myself. I just never dreamed how different I was and how much I didn’t belong.

Emer and Carson have light eyes like me. I remember Mrs. Stevenson from up the road coming up one morning to drop off fresh peaches from her grove so Momma could bake us a pie.

That’s the excuse she gave for visiting. Mrs. Stevenson, being the busybody that she was, wanted to see how our project was coming along.

“Three boys doing all that work? I don’t believe it,” she said. “Even if they are Jacob Wilder’s boys.”

Well, she wasn’t quite right about that.

Mrs. Stevenson did stop and admire our work, scrutinizing to see if all the boards were laid right, even though that woman probably never swung a hammer in her life. She also stopped to admire our young strapping bodies. Mrs. Stevenson was always like that, checking out the young men around the island when she thought no one would notice.

I remember that day so well. Ever since Becca started my interview about my upbringing, I remember things I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten.

Becca and me are lovers, first and foremost. She’s become the most important person in every aspect of my life. We haven’t spent a night apart since the first time we made love on the beach. There are dinners with our friends, our share of meals on our own, and lots of work to repair my legacy and business. She cares about me and what happens. It’s obvious by the way she touches me and fusses whenever Mason calls. Her love, her devotion, it shows in every way, even with respect to these interviews.

The questions she asks probe deep despite their simplicity, painting those memories of my time with my family in vivid colors, bringing back the good times I remember, but also the torment that haunts me to this moment.

That day Mrs. Stevenson arrived is so ingrained from all the probing into my life Becca’s done, I can almost see Mrs. Stevenson standing before me. She had the basket of peaches tucked under her arm, their amber and red colors bright and luminous under the sun. Her head shifted from side to side, taking in the detail of the woodwork, her large sunglasses hiding most of her face.

“My, Jacob,” she told Daddy. “What handsome boys you have. And they look so much alike. The girls are going to give you a hard time, fellas,” she warned.

My brothers laughed, knowing how she was and how she used those large glasses to hide the blatant stares she’d throw our way. I started to laugh as well, even though at fourteen, she made me strangely uncomfortable. But my laugh didn’t quite release as it should, not when I saw the look on Daddy’s face. He bowed his head, staring hard at the ground.

“Hale looks more like his mama,” he said.

Mrs. Stevenson paused, turning to him because Daddy was a good-looking man too. “Don’t they all?” she asked, clearly confused.

“Not as much as Hale,” he said.

I didn’t understand what he meant then. But I recognized her confusion, even though I was still young and blissfully blind. I wasn’t hurt, exactly. I still thought I was loved and one of his boys. But as I look onto the porch and everything I thought my family and me had built together, all I feel is a bite of pain.

The door swings open without much care and the screen slams just as rough against the siding. My brother Carson steps out. I don’t think it’s much past eleven yet, but here he is, taking a swig from the half-empty bottle of beer in his hand. I think he’s pissed I’m here and that’s why the doorframe hit against the house as hard as it did. It takes a few sloppy steps forward on his part for me to realize that he’s not angry, he’s just way past drunk.

His feet shuffle forward, coming dangerously close to the edge of the porch. His dark hair is mussed and his beard is long enough to brush against his stained white T-shirt. It’s not one of those fashionable beards that are in style. It’s tangled and speaks of a man who no longer cares about anything, let alone shaving.

“Well, well, well,” Carson say. “Look who the fuck finally showed.”

I’m sure he’s talking to me until Emer, our middle brother, emerges from the side of the house. The gray shirt he’s wearing is coated with dirt, and he’s holding freshly pulled weeds in both hands. He has a beard, too, but his is neat and trimmed close to his jaw.

In New York, everything I wore cost a lot, right down my drawers. But here in Kiawah it’s not about dressing for success. It’s all about being comfortable. Today, I’m in a pair of jeans and light navy T-shirt. The way Emer eyes me from head to toe, you’d think I’d shown up in fur and diamonds just to fuck with him.

Unlike Carson, Emer isn’t drunk. Very much like Carson, he’s not happy to see me. There’re no warm brotherly hugs, not that there ever were. Those touchy-feely kind of brothers, we were never them. Roughhousing came naturally for us and usually ended in blood and Momma ordering us out of the house to run a few miles until we “stopped acting like wild animals and more like the Wilders we are.”

“Go walk it off,” Emer tells Carson, his steady gaze never leaving mine. I expect a fight today. I’m prepared for it and I’m not afraid. Regardless, the next few steps I take to meet Emer are the hardest yet.

Emer tosses the weeds in his hands aside. I already know they’re from Momma’s garden. Like all southern women in the area, she used to pride herself on a garden that overflowed with grand flowers and tomato plants that produced fruit almost too pretty to eat.

Carson hobbles down the steps, missing the last two. I hurry toward him to help him up, but he smacks my hand away. It doesn’t hurt like I think he wants it to. He almost misses me, the tips of his fingers barely connecting.

“Are you here for your birth certificate or something?” Carson asks. “Maybe some money you think you’re owed from the will? Shit, I hate to break it to you, but I think all that’s done and used up.” He rises, barely keeping his balance. “Isn’t that right, Emer? Didn’t we up and spend that money together,brother?”

The emphasis on the word “brother” is supposed to hurt me. For all I’m trying to be that stone figure I was on Wall Street, the one nothing could penetrate, Carson accomplishes his mission. Pain boils my insides. I do my best to not reflect it on my face. I’ll admit, it takes some doing.

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