wall of his house. “All those years ago . . . I was just a boy . . . eight or nine. How can anyone remember anything for sure?”
“I can, Mr. McGowan, because I had to stay behind. I remember up north in Gainesville like it was yesterday.”
Bret lurched out of the rocker and leaned against the wall for support. Straightening his posture, his ruddy face seemed to bleach bone white, the flushed color draining down somewhere inside his body. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“All this talk about ancient, evil days. It’s enough to split a man’s head trying to recollect. All I know is . . . mother said father insisted we stay home before—” He shook his head again and raised his arms in a hopeless gesture. “This is ridiculous. I can barely remember what I did thirty-hours ago let alone thirty-eight years.”
Philip looked down at the floorboards. “Wish it was that easy for me, sir, but I couldn’t get away. I was about to go when they showed up at the door.”
The color was returning to Bret’s face. He breathed heavily, his eyes, tight and sharp, pointed into Philip’s. “Who . . . who came to our home?” He placed the brandy bottle back on the side table.
Philip raised his gaze again. “Boland, Haines, Ragget. They’re all dead now, and that decrepit old pervert Weems soon enough, God willing. Letting time heal all the old wounds. That’s the way your mother wanted it to be.” He looked out at the swooping gulls over the water. “I would take her out to every cemetery in town so she could spit on their graves.”
Bret seized Philip by both his shoulders and shook. “And after all this time you’ve said nothing? I asked you a question! Who the hell showed up at our Gainesville ranch?”
Philip stared into Bret’s livid eyes. The dead be damned now for what they’ve done. There’s nothing more either one of them could do. He’d kept his promise and now he was free of it.
He took a deep breath before he spoke. “Mr. McGowan, I’m nothing but another ol’ Uncle Tom to him now, so he doesn’t remember me, but I’ll always remember him. The youngest buck in the gang—no more than fourteen or fifteen—thought he was better and smarter too than the rest of that liquored up trash. He didn’t seem to approve of what they were doing but he was there all the same.” Philip glanced down at Bret’s hand still gripping his arm. Bret let go and looked away.
Philip stepped to the veranda railing. “All of them firing their guns in the air, hollering ‘Save Texas,’ as if doing the devil’s work was something patriotic. You’d never know him now with all his sophisticated airs and the ‘Doctor’ before his name, but that night—”
“Hell . . . Hellreich?” Bret rushed up to Philip. “Caden Hellreich was in our house?”
“They didn’t call him that then. Gus, short for Augustus, likely.” Philip leaned on the railing and looked back out to the Gulf. “You must have gotten away just before they broke into the attic. Your mother sent me for help but I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop them.”
He looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “That night they were something less than men; the worst your kind can be, not even the lowest animal does that.”
Bret’s face contorted as if he had been struck from behind on the back. He shook his head again and brushed back his uncombed hair with his hand.
“Sir, there was nothing you could have done to prevent what happened.”
“The hell there wasn’t.” He rubbed his sunken eyes with the palm of his hand. “I know, I promised mother. I had to warn my father. I remember running and running until—”
Bret shuddered as if suffering a seizure. He jiggled his head and rubbed the sweaty stubble on his face. He looked past Philip as though looking at someone far in the distance. “Sometimes when I dream, there are faces and voices circling us like birds. Mother is holding me close and she screams.”
He brushed past Philip and leaned against the top rail of the veranda with his hand. “I wake up to men’s laughter ringing in my ears. Echoes of voices, but none of them are my father.” His head drooped like a condemned man and he rubbed his temples. “It was my fault. They hung my father because I couldn’t keep the