Storm Runners by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

THEY SAT ON the couch and he showed her his Santa Ana High School yearbook for his senior year, replete with pictures of himself and Hallie and Mike.

He hadn’t looked at these things in years and to see himself posed before the marching band, mace held high and shako hat worn low, was to see a child living his desires free of self-consciousness and history.

“I recognize you,” said Frankie. “Look what chubby cheeks you had. And so serious!”

“Hey, drum majoring was an important job.”

He showed her the pictures of Hallie—her senior shot, her picture as “Most Sarcastic Senior,” and a candid image of her standing at a pep rally with a doubtful look on her pretty face.

“She was an outsider,” said Frankie.

When Stromsoe turned to the first of the T seniors, he just tapped the page on Mike. Tavarez looked up at them, his expression wholly remote but the half smile in place like a casual piece of armor.

Frankie looked down at the picture and said nothing.

Caught between his desire to reveal and his need to protect, Stromsoe took out a favorite picture—Billy at age four standing on a dock with a yellow child’s fishing rod in his hand.

Stromsoe’s whole world immediately tilted and the questions of what could have been slid down on him with all their awesome weight.

“Billy,” he said. “Four years old.”

“He’s beautiful,” Frankie said quietly.

“He was very beautiful.”

She bowed her head.

Stromsoe continued to look at the picture—it hadn’t been all that long because he had visited these images in their boxes regularly over the last two years—but now, exposed to someone else, Billy seemed to flourish like a plant exposed to fresh air and sunlight and for the first time since Billy’s death Stromsoe was able to see his son’s particular traits instead of his tremendous absence. He saw Billy’s intelligence and shyness. He saw his grave respect for the tiny perch he’d brought out of the pond and now dangled from the rod—the same gravity that his father had brought to drum majoring, of all things, and later to his work. Stromsoe saw too, in the firm set of Billy’s jaw, a conviction that the moment and the fish were important. An attribute, thought Stromsoe, that might have later become valuable to Billy in this world of distraction and diluted faith.

Might have.

Might have later.

Might have later become.

“Not fair,” said Frankie.

Stromsoe saw a tear hit the back of one of her big hands, which were folded on her lap.

“Oops,” she whispered. “Sorry.”

“I don’t mind.”

He selected another picture, Billy dressed in a pirate’s costume for Halloween, brandishing a rubber sword. He was trying his best to look menacing but it was easy to see the self-mockery in him. There was also something seductive in his expression, as if he was inviting you and only you to team up and play along.

“That was the Hallie in him,” said Stromsoe. “The part of him that couldn’t take things too seriously. The part of him that smiled and laughed and played.

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