Becoming Bennington

by

Logan Snyder

78,300 Words

43 Chapters

In cities across the country, certain families have ruled society for generation after generation. From power comes their wealth, or from their wealth comes unmatched power, whichever the path, the formula has always been simple. Keep the dream alive at all costs.

But over time, some dynasties have collapsed, bringing entire cities to their knees, while others have flourished, ever so slightly adapting to the changing times. And then there are the empires, held together by the thinnest strands of thread, for which the rulers know the end is near.

Nothing in this world lasts forever, and there’s one family that’s on the brink of absolution from the wicked chains of history.

I. Charlie

1

I am a criminal. They tell me it’s in my blood—it is. But I haven’t even done a damn thing wrong, and that’s the god-honest truth this time.

I’m not the type of criminal that is tried in a criminal count, with twelve strangers getting to know your every intimate detail. No, but similarly, I’ve been tried through the media, in the court of public opinion. And most importantly to my bank account, my ass has battled in the civil courts.

Twenty-four months ago, the Louisville skyline was getting a much needed facelift, keeping up with the other second tier cities, with a sleek forty-story hotel almost halfway finished on the riverfront.

It was later in the afternoon, say 3 p.m., and certainly late for the crane operator who’d stumbled into work at 6 a.m. still drunk from the night before. Not the kind of drunk where he went home at midnight and slept for four hours, but the kind of drunk where he was living high at the riverboat ninety minutes before showing up for work, the ringing of slot machines still echoing in his ears, and his goatee still damp from whiskey.

When the operator showed up that morning, the site manager, pressed to keep things on schedule, simply rolled his eyes and sent him to straight to the crane. I’d later find out through depositions that it wasn’t the first time.

The operator gave in to weakness, passed out and leaned forward on the controls, sending the crane hurling into the concrete and steel promise of the future attraction.

That afternoon, my life, and my family’s future—err, fortune—crumbled just as fast and hard as the hotel structure. Strangely though, I’d been waiting for this day for a long time.

Eighteen people were killed. Another thirty-one were whisked away to the hospital, four with serious life-debilitating injuries. Every long-distance family member of those affected silently celebrated between mourning and prayer, the prospect of good fortune now at their fingertips.

The dumbass didn’t work for me—didn’t have to. That’s not how it works. When you’re from the Bennington ilk, the name etched across the crane, and the same name carved into numerous buildings across the city, when shit like this happens, it’s a dagger in the stomach—you feel the burn, you see the blood, and then you waste away for a bit before finally bleeding out, all the spectators clamoring for another peek at the fallen gladiator.

Right now I’m bleeding over three thousand bucks an hour for the team of four attorneys assigned to defend my family. That math makes me sick. But those same scumbags who so vigorously defend us are the same ones I have to pay to keep the peace. We’re all in too deep now—too many secrets on the brink of bursting.

Lately, I sit around the afternoon and drink bourbon, always neat, under the canopy of autumn colors out back of our family estate. A monstrous abode overlooking the Ohio River from the top of a bluff, it’s been in the family for three dreadful generations.

I sit there and wonder how I ended up here. But the answer is always too easy.

I was born privileged, or so I’ve been told. Yet the last time I checked, no one else had walked a day in my shoes. And those who’d come close, well, they don’t walk anywhere anymore.

My wealth, I accumulated some of it the oldest way in the books—I inherited it. The good, the bad, the fortune, the curse, the pretty, and the ugly. I carry it all, the genetics of a modern catastrophe, a cruel tragedy of the American Dream.

I hardly spend much time in this city. I haven’t for at least a decade. Even now, I return to show my face in court only when absolutely necessary, which is about once each month. Then I spend most of my time sitting out back of the estate, pondering life, as I know it—as I knew it—plotting my next play.

I have two daughters, three and five, and a wife out east on a horse farm an hour and a half south of Washington, DC. Three of us are happy there in Virginia where we don’t have to live with the ‘Bennington baggage,’ as my former second wife would constantly complain, and people leave us alone for the most part.

The fourth member of the family, my wife, I like to believe that she used to be happy. That is, until the rumblings of Bennington drama started rearing its head into our life. But by then it was too late. She was pregnant with our second girl and caught in the midst of a lifelong battle between good and evil.

What most of us call a great American marriage of two prominent families, our marriage was doomed from the beginning.

In a world where every familial decision gets papered by attorneys, and where all of us triumphantly don our paper-thin veils of happiness toward any wandering eye, I was looking for a lover. Instead, I found a friendship where the frequency of favors and benefits has waned significantly over time. But I can’t blame her for everything.

Thanks to video conferencing, private jets, and an executive assistant who still doesn’t know how valuable she is—thank god she’s unaware of any glass ceiling—it’s easy to run the family business from my home office. I can orchestrate and close a deal in the same hour that I change diapers, watch Disney with my oldest, and put my youngest down for naps. Although my wife, Clara, will disagree that I even attempt to engage in the family chores.

But life is peaceful when you don’t have the weight of three generations of expectations—expectations of self-destruction—shoved in your face every day you walk out the front door. No, it just resides a short forty-five minute plane ride away.

As the oldest in my crop of Benningtons, I get to carry on the family name, preserving our power and wealth against all odds, because that’s what my grandfather wanted—protect his legacy. And the last generation, my father, fell victim to the great expectations, or great lies, and ended up with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson shoved in his mouth. Even more unsettling, that gun has killed two people, not just one.

In exactly six hours, I will walk into the mansion and go upstairs into the main family office. I’ll recline back in the plush leather swivel chair, a perfect view of the river out the window, and I’ll stare at the two portraits of the Bennington men who came before, all sharing my name, Charles Franklin Bennington. And I’ll pray that everything they worked to preserve and protect will be destroyed.

Then the four suits from Kettering & Maher, the long-standing law firm of the family, will come pick me up in their swanky town car and drag me to the courthouse, paraded like a trophy, so they can get off on showcasing their client list. If I were them, I’d put the Pacific Ocean between the Benningtons and my law firm. I can’t wait to fire their asses.

I’ve been told not to be surprised if our total damages come back north of $100 million owed to the plaintiffs.

“That much?” I recall asking the partner in charge.

“Your family has generations of crimes to atone for,” he explained. “This was the perfect storm to compensate everyone you hurt.”

“I haven’t hurt a soul,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he further explained. “When you’re alone at the top for so long, everyone deserves their piece for keeping you there. It’s a cruel world out there.”

I should know.

That attorney learned his lesson. Don’t blindside a Bennington with bad news. My fist landed squarely on his chin, and it took two paralegals, a chummy little intern, and a shot of vodka to pull me away.

But regardless of what happens in court, even though I know the outcome, we’ll immediately move to file an appeal, and then another few months will pass until resolution. There’s an evil voice inside me that wants to string this out for all eternity.

I don’t believe in the judicial mandate of writing checks for hurt feelings. I don’t deal in emotions. The judiciary is not, and has never been, a sufficient redistributor of wealth, all under the guise of fairness.

We’ve quickly accelerated from empathizing with victims to celebrating victimhood. Look around. It’s now en vogue to be victimized. Never in the history of the world has society cherished, rewarded, and celebrated those who happened to be on the misfortunate side of life. Yes, it pays—and pays well—to be a victim.

I believe in apologies, and I said mine in no specific terms. Apparently, not everyone shares my values.

I’ll settle this. Or maybe I won’t. But in any event, I won’t pay a single cent of my own money to satisfy the neglect, wants, and needs of the victims. No, I’ll write the damn check because I’m sick of being pestered by something so petty. I’ll make it go away like the annoying little gnat that it has become.

We turned them from being deserving victims who need a helping hand into bloodsucking leeches that expect to be compensated at the same rate as a well-seasoned business executive. I have no words for the collective idiocy that rules the land.

But when the Bennington empire is finally destroyed, when the last pennies are distributed to the less fortunate, when the power that built the city has vanquished under public scorn, rather than hiding away in obscurity for the rest of my life, I’ll be the one who stands victorious on the podium, just as I always have.

A long time ago, perhaps in college, or maybe earlier, I finally figured out why I was so dangerous. I don’t give a shit, and that makes me the scariest of them all.

2

The first time I ran away from home, I was seven. I don’t remember why, but I only made it to the end of our driveway, an oak lined brick drive that curled its way down the bluff. Our head housekeeper, Trudy, was hot on my heels.

If it hadn’t been for that golf cart she was driving, I would’ve been long gone. There’s no chance she would’ve caught me, even though my short legs couldn’t run very far. I had no idea where I was headed, but it was anywhere but home.

She limbered like a hippo, and not the kind in National Geographic, but the immobile ones in a zoo. My first encounter with the wrath of God came that day when she grabbed the back of my sweater so tight that the only thing keeping my eyes in socket was my tiny glasses.

But she was as soft as a marshmallow, physically and emotionally. I do miss her. She was my first best friend.

“And what kind of adventure does Charlie want go on today?” she’d ask every morning.

Always on guard, scared of kidnappers, murderers, and meticulously plotted coup attempts, paranoia never eluded my family. My little brother and I—I’ll talk about him later—we were never allowed out of site off the property except for school and certain social events, which all took place in our secluded concentration of wealth and power.

“We’re safe from the riffraff here,” my father would always say. I like to think he didn’t actually mean it.

I’ll admit, we had a nice fifteen acres to call our own, complete with two creeks, an apple orchard, two worthless horses that were old as hell, and a flower garden we weren’t allowed to even look at.

“Let’s go see the city,” I’d beg. “The buildings are so tall,” I’d proclaim as a view of the top of the skyline crept over the back edge of our property.

“Maybe when you’re a bit older, young man,” Trudy always replied. But I could see in her eyes that she secretly wanted to whisk me away to show me how the real world lived.

I heard about the city from my friends in first grade, all eight of us. The crime, the poor people, drugs, commoners, everyone we couldn’t associate with. Yet our families held paramount the thought of being revered by them all. Even for a six-year old, the irony struck hard.

Not that I would have ever been sent to public school, but in the mid-1980s, the city was about ten years into its holy desegregation crusade. Black kids were sent to first grade in white neighborhoods, and white kids were sent to where white kids hadn’t set foot in thirty years. It was a recipe for, well, something.

I never saw a problem with it, but what did I know? Trudy was black, and she was my best friend. Another house worker was Mexican, and I only ate the dinner if she cooked.

The ten or so families in our magical enclave on the bluff, known as Eden Falls, banned together, although I now know it was only my grandfather and one other asshole making the call, and decided to send all the children to Cornerstone Academy, the swampy armpit of adolescent grooming. With a total enrollment of just shy of two hundred, aged six to eighteen, and the motto of A Foundation of Leadership, we all entered the first grade without a chance at doing anything meaningful in life.

Not quite the elite New England prep school it so desired to be, it did serve as the insulated center of education for the upper crust throughout the region. While never blatantly discriminatory, the hefty price tag was enough to keep all of the wannabes far away.

The second time I ran away from home, I nailed it. I was ten.

The live-in nanny—my brother and I ran off a different one every year—she’d brought me home after fifth grade orientation, a boring, pointless affair of meeting the same raggedy teacher who already knew everything about you, and you about her. It was a miserable August afternoon, the kind where even the air sweats.

I hopped out of the back seat of the car and pulled the slacks down my slimy legs right there in front of the garage. Luckily, I already had shorts on underneath, ready for my escape.

“Can you bring me some lemonade?” I asked the nanny.

“I can do that,” she replied, “but first I have to make a new batch.”

The perfect window of opportunity.

As I cautiously turned and walked down the drive, I could hear the lazy bitch calling for Trudy to make the lemonade.

“And that’s why you’re just a nanny,” I remember saying as I fled down the front hill.

With freedom only moments away, I heard the rumble of a city bus coming down the two-lane highway at the foot of the bluff.

I ran across the street, almost standing directly in its approaching path, and vigorously waved my arms until the bus started to slow. It came to a stop within just a couple of feet from where I stood and the door opened. The excitement paralyzed me.

Not knowing a thing about how the bus system worked, I climbed onto the bottom step and stared at the driver, speechless.

“You know, kid,” he lectured, “this isn’t a bus stop.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Sorry.”

“Where are you headed? And where are your parents?”

And that’s when it all started.

“They’re at work,” I lied. “And, uh, I need a ride.”

“Where are you headed?”

I could tell the handful of passengers already on board were getting restless with some tadpole of a kid, especially one seemingly from Eden Falls, slowing them down.

“Downtown, sir,” I said politely. “I’d like to go to the courthouse. I have money to pay you.” Then I reached into my pocket and realized my pittance of a few dollars was stashed in my slacks that lay disheveled in driveway.

The bus driver, eager to get on with his route took pity on my poor soul. The random sympathy offered to a prick child from the upper crust wasn’t lost on me, and it’s still something that sticks with me to this day.

“That’s ok, son, step aboard. You’re in luck. I’ll drop you right at the doorstep.”

My father spent a lot of time in court for various reasons, some that I still don’t quite understand. But now, as a thirty-eight year old businessman myself, I’ve wasted too many hours in courtrooms and with attorneys. And it all goes back to that day.

I don’t know why I picked the courthouse. Perhaps it was the only downtown location I could think of. I just wanted to see the city. But more importantly, I wanted to get away from Eden Falls, if only for an afternoon.

Directly on the line of demarcation, the topic of many dinner table conversations, stood the city courthouse.

“Don’t waste your time downtown,” my parents would say. “There’s nothing we don’t have out here,” referring to the boutiques, malls, and restaurants. “And without a doubt, do not cross Seventh Street.”

“It’s dangerous for a young boy like you,” my father would say.

“It’s dangerous for anyone,” my mother would chime in.

They didn’t always provide a united front, but this was one issue they wouldn’t dare let one of their offspring mess up, for fear of public embarrassment from all of their lovely neighbors.

I toed the corner of Seventh and Liberty, a new world awaiting me. Men in fine suits, café patrons on sidewalks, and the most beautiful women I’d ever seen surrounded me on the bustling city street, the courthouse’s shadow creeping over my shoulder.

Like all great pioneers, I stepped forward into the abyss. One block, two blocks, I traveled deeper into the unknown. A warehouse stood erect to my right, an office building shimmered in the afternoon sun on my left. Under the highway overpass, I walked past two men sleeping, wrapped in wool blankets in this god-awful heat.

“Are you okay?” I asked, innocently.

No answer. Not to be frightened, I shrugged and kept going.

After a couple of blocks, there was an apartment complex, like ones I’d only seen on television. Every unit looked the same, some of the gray siding was in disrepair, and there were children everywhere. Toddlers in diapers, kids my age on bikes, and teenagers dancing to the rhythm of the boom box. Abandoned cars, many of which didn’t have doors or windows or wheels lined the street.

An equal amount of white and black people, these were the poor people I’d been warned about. They didn’t threaten me whatsoever. Sure, a few wayward glances that turned into double and triple takes, and a few stares that lingered three seconds too long, but no one approached me or seemed too offended by my presence. Hell, I didn’t know any better.

I kicked a basketball back to a group of older boys.

“Want to play?” the tall one shouted.

“No, thank you,” I responded, feeling more confident by the second.

“Scared?” another asked. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. Just need an extra body.”

“Not today,” I replied again.

“Momma boy’s scared,” the tall one said again.

All of them laughed hysterically. And I laughed back. It was the only thing I could think to do. They went straight back to their game—I was already forgotten.

Under the Bennington roof, it was nothing but serious business all of the time, plotting against friends and enemies alike, undermining all relationships, if only for a slight upper hand. If someone made a joke, which I can count the number of times on one hand, it was always at the expense of some inferior person. It would be about one of the neighbor’s kids, or one of the teachers at Cornerstone, or about the terrible service at a restaurant—and always malicious.

Jokes were cruel under my roof—never funny. No teasing, no riling, no good-natured hazing. That’s not how Benningtons acted. We were held to the strictest of gilded manners. No wonder my father put a gun between his teeth.

I continued on the street where boys could be boys. Where mothers toted laundry baskets on one arm with a child dangling carefree on the other. Go figure, a mother holding her own child.

“Why are you smiling?” The voice boomed behind me and echoed through my head. “And what the hell are you doing here? You don’t belong here, young man.”

All of my euphoria evaporated as I slowly turned around. Suddenly, I could feel every degree of the crippling afternoon heat, my hands dripping with fear.

“Get in here right now,” he ordered, holding open the front door.

A striped pole adjacent to the front window sat just below the sign, Rodney’s Cuts.

The frigid, dry air was a welcomed relief. Goosebumps immediately covered my skinny arms and legs as I stepped into the building.

Defiant in my new surroundings, I wasn’t remotely scared. Grown men hovered around me, all black men. But there was one white man. He was very old, sitting at a desk in the back flipping through a newspaper. Holes bore through the knees of his jeans.

“Again, what are you doing down here?” asked the big man. “Who are you?”

I didn’t answer.

My mouth hung open as I spun around the room, taking in its aged décor, ripped brown barber’s chairs, dusty ledges, and cluttered waiting area. I had never seen anything like it.

“Hey,” he said, more firmly this time.

I turned and looked him in the eye, respectfully.

“My name is Charlie,” I said.

“What are you doing?”

“Field trip?” I answered.

The towering men looked at each other confused on what to do with this kid who was clearly out of his element. Thankfully I wasn’t wearing my obligatory Cornerstone sport jacket, sporting its proud maroon seal and all.

“What’s your momma’s name?” he asked. “What’s her phone number? She gonna need to come pick you up.”

“Lillian,” I answered. “Lillian Bennington, and there’s no way I’m giving you her phone number,” I said. I meant it.

“Alright then,” he chuckled. “But we need to get you on home. You don’t belong down here in these parts.”

They all shared a laughed, and a thought overcame him. He suddenly turned serious and said to me, “You ain’t from the Bennington’s like in Bennington’s department store, are you?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said without hesitation. He simply asked a question and I answered it.

My family owned the Bennington’s store for decades before we sold it off in the late 1980s. Retail, media, construction, we owned something all over the city, and as I’d learn later, all over the country, too.

To this day, I give Rodney shit for making the connection with the department store. “Should’ve visited Bennington’s,” is my go-to line if he isn’t looking dapper.

But when one of the wealthiest families has a child missing, it’s only a matter of time until all hell breaks loose. On an old box television, not meticulously hung in the corner, a breaking news story tuned in live.

There I was on television, hair preciously combed to one side, white starched button down underneath my Cornerstone jacket. All heads turned and stared at me.

“We gotta get you outta here,” said the big black man. My young intuition told me he was Rodney, and I’d find out later that I was spot on. “We don’t need no cops coming in here.”

The sweat beads that had been perched on top of his baldhead now cascaded down his face. The others frantically scurried about. The old white man in the corner stared at the television, stiff as a board.

“Darius!” yelled Rodney. “Get in here right now!”

A skinny black boy, about my height, came running. He had glasses just like me, although his hung a little large on his long face.

“This is Charlie,” Rodney told Darius. “Take him in the back and show him some of your toys.”

One of the other men ushered us into a back room while they debated on how to handle this situation.

“If we play this right, we could get rich,” I overheard one man say.

“If we play it wrong, we ain’t never seeing daylight again,” said Rodney, panicking. “I know about these jokers.”

“Let’s just call the police and tell the truth,” another voice of reason chimed in. “We just found him. He wandered in. No harm, no foul.”

“I don’t trust those police,” Rodney replied. “We’ll all be in handcuffs before this thing is over. Somebody take that kid and drop him off somewhere.”

It must have been the old white man, or maybe someone else, but they all calmed their nonsense, and through the fast whispers I barely made out the decision—to call some shady low-rate attorney they knew.

“Do you have an Atari?” asked Darius.

“I do.”

“Wanna play Donkey Kong?”

“Totally,” I said.

Darius became my second best friend that day.

And I have no idea whatever happened to that nanny, but I never saw her again. Part of me hopes Trudy had the last laugh there.

*****

I feel my phone vibrate in the pocket of my shorts.

“Hello?” I say.

“I’m out front,” says Darius. “Where are you?”

“Out back. In the shade.”

Darius did quite well given his early circumstances. The youngest of Rodney’s eight children, he was one of only two males, and did he ever make his father proud. He hit a growth spurt about two months after I met him, and it never slowed down. A towering 6’8”, he dominated the local high school circuit earning all-state basketball honors. And everyone forgets that he was runner-up for Player of the Year his senior year in football.

He didn’t earn his accolades at any place like Cornerstone Academy. No, we didn’t have teams like that. Up on the bluff, the high school athletic commission had to let a few of us play varsity sports for another neighboring small private school. Checks get written and kids get to play.

Darius spurned the home state Wildcats of Kentucky and chose to play basketball for the Hall of Fame coach at Indiana, where he starred and led the Hoosiers to four straight NCAA tournaments. Drafted in the second round, he puttered around the NBA for three seasons before playing three more in Europe. Funny how a little kid growing up in the back of Rodney’s Cuts has seen more of the world than most of those rich assholes from Eden Falls, even with private jets at their disposal.

After basketball life ended, Darius enrolled in law school at Vanderbilt and now runs a very successful downtown practice mere blocks, yet light years away, from that old barber shop.

Fashionable as always, his entire head is clean-shaven. He unfastens the top three buttons on his striped oxford and flips his Ray-Bans on the patio table.

“Have you seen this yet?” he says, as he flips the morning paper onto the patio table. “I snagged it from your box out front.”

“I guess you have your answer then,” I fire back.

He eases into a chair and sighs deeply.

“Some hot shot like you,” he says, “I thought maybe you ditched the print and went all digital.”

“Sorry,” I say. “A little on edge this morning.”

“I’d be, too. Remember that I always told you I’d handle this case for you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “It’s best that you stay as far away from this as possible.”

“You should’ve settled like I said a year ago. Pennies on the dollar is all you’d have to pay.”

“I don’t care about the money anymore,” I say.

“I’ve known that for quite some time now,” he interrupts. “You’re one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known. But I hope you figure this one out. You worried about bankruptcy though?”

“Sometimes,” I say. “We’ll see what happens this afternoon and let everything play out. If twelve of my closest friends say I owe money, well then, the laws of the universe say I should owe money.”

“Don’t be crass,” he says.

“Too early for a drink?” I ask.

Before he can answer I’m already on my way into the main house to grab the first bottle my hand touches. Even though nobody lives here full time, I do my best to keep it fully stocked for moments like these.

Darius piddles around the garden even though he couldn’t name a single flower, while I find two glasses and a bottle of bourbon.

I set up shop at the table and ask, “Did Uncle Rodney get everything I needed?”

“That’s what he says,” Darius confirms. “Won’t tell me anything, though. Just says you asked him for some help.”

“He’s a good man,” I say.

Indeed, he’s one of the best.

3

I’ve only hated two people in my life, yet the judge in my current case is making quite the run at number three. It’s the genuine kind of hate that drives one to act out like a madman—the hate that corrupts the soul.

The second person I grew to hate was my second ex-wife, and my bank account has fourteen million easy reasons why.

The first person I ever hated, and still hate this very hour, is Miles Crutcher.

Miles comes from a long line of bankers, and he’ll be the first person to tell you about it. Anointed the chosen one as a young boy by our noble neighbors, probably because his mother dressed him like a fifty-year old politician until he married, he didn’t have a chance in life. Ripe with entitlement, he demanded, and he received. He’d demand again, and he’d receive again. It was a never-ending cycle of Miles Crutcher, the savior of society, the golden child of Eden Falls.

That is, until the first time I punched him. Some boring afternoons, I still fantasize about it. One right haymaker changed the course of history, and the world witnessed the birth of my manhood.

By the time I was a freshman in the upper school, I finally ditched the glasses, started shaving once a week, counted two dark chest hairs, and had turned into a more than adequate athlete. And I was damn smart.

Miles was a senior, proud valedictorian of the graduating class of twenty-five, and a genetic misfire. If I possessed the ability to sympathize, maybe I’d pity him. But I won’t, no sir. Never.

He shaves everyday even though he only has four blonde hairs under his chin. He parts his hair every morning, even Saturdays, perfectly from left to right.

He wears loafers without socks, sometimes with pants, sometimes with shorts, never shy of his pasty legs, but always with a crisp starched oxford, straight tucked into his belt, which sits conveniently at the equator of his round trunk. Seven days a week he does this.

When he talks, his chain disappears into his turkey neck—always has, just like his daddy and his daddy before him.

And his round glasses sit atop rosy red cheeks that glow whenever he walks up a flight of stairs.

His wife isn’t ugly, but she’s also not pretty. The same goes for his four daughters. I don’t feel sorry for his wife. She had a choice, just like they all do.

One look at the couple and it’s obvious they’ve only had sex in one position, once a week since their first month of marriage. She fantasizes about the other men at the country club, and he lays there, stiff on his back, certain that he’s the best lay she’s ever had. Yet he’s the only one at the club who doesn’t know about her midnight jaunts around town.

He runs a regimented ship. Cars are cleaned spotless on Friday afternoons. Lawn is perfectly manicured every Thursday, March through November. Girls aren’t allowed out of the house without makeup, curls, and pearls. Proud Crutchers, on display in the third pew every Sunday, to be seen by any and all.

But he could barely hack it at the thousand-student liberal arts college just outside the city and is now a lowly loan officer at the bank his family trust had to sell in order to keep the estate in Eden Falls, while his wife burns through cash faster than a mafia accountant during a raid.

Miles Crutcher is a waste.

It was a warmer than average October day. Leaves slightly fading from the dull late summer green into hints of orange and yellow. The open windows in every classroom desperately breathing in the last scents of summer.

“The old hag probably smells like a wet dog,” Miles said, looking the same then as he does now—add the Cornerstone jacket.

I overhead him after I paid for my lunch in the cafeteria where the entire upper school ate during the same lunch period.

Nobody laughed at his remark. He’d grown old on everyone. For most, it was probably from the moment he was born.

“Can’t she afford a car with air conditioning?” he continued, this time directed out the window and loud enough Mrs. Bell, the art teacher, could hear as she clamored through boxes in her trunk.

It was common knowledge that the school’s steep tuition didn’t line the teachers’ pockets, especially a discount-aged art teacher. It was also common knowledge that the medical bills from her late husband’s recent cancer battle had all but bankrupted the family. And not a single dollar seemed to flow from the Cornerstone coffers, or from those that enjoyed such a privileged education.

Mrs. Bell turned her head and peered inside the cafeteria window. When she saw it was Miles, her chin lowered to her chest and she immediately walked off, her shirt soaked through with sweat on her lower back, the gray hair matted to the back of her neck. Not in the best of health, she lumbered as she walked, praying for the lord to just take her from this miserable life.

“My pops says they should replace art class with something more practical, like a business class,” said Miles. “What a waste of money and time to teach little kids how to finger paint and play with clay!”

“That’s enough, Miles,” said his girlfriend, now wife.

But it didn’t stop the rest of his upper classmen comrades from joining in on the fun, hooting and hollering their way to infamy.

I caught his eye. I hadn’t moved or looked away since I stepped out of the lunch line. The disdain must’ve been evident on my face.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

I just shook my head side to side. Didn’t say a word.

“You think you’re high and mighty?” he said. All eyes were now on me.

“You’re disgusting,” my freshman courage muttered under my breath.

“What did you say to me?”

“I said you’re a moron,” I said more loudly this time. “A typical Cornerstone asshole.”

If it hadn’t been for that last flippant comment, I might not have been suspended. But the first rule at Cornerstone was that you worshipped the holy institution that it was.

His girlfriend’s face flushed red.

“Sounds like you think you’re the big man of the house now that daddy’s dead,” he said.

He took three steps toward me. I didn’t know whether he was going to yell or push or kick or bite. It didn’t matter. I dropped my lunch to the floor and unleashed a right haymaker, landing squarely to his fat cheek.

He dropped.

Glasses shattered, blood streaming down his face, slowly at first, and then more steadily, Miles didn’t get up. The entire cafeteria, students and adults alike, stood motionless. I beamed with pride.

Young gentlemen—the future leaders of the free world—would never act like this, and never had, on Cornerstone’s campus. Could I really have been involved in the first fight in the pathetic history of the place? Young boys at the school were wound so tight that they had no chance to become men.

“Come with me, young man,” she said.

She grabbed my right elbow with the death grip of a feisty young mother scolding her toddler. It hurt like hell, but I never gave a thought to trying to break from her grasp. A member of my mother’s bridge club—err, day drinking club—she volunteered at the school three days a week to keep an eye on her two daughters. She knew I was harmless, but it didn’t stop her from parading me down to the office like a juvenile degenerate.

What seemed like an hour was only five minutes later, and Miles hobbled into the office, supported on both sides by two accommodating teachers. Their serious glares didn’t stand a chance of piercing my confidence. He held an ice pack to his face.

“Too bad daddy isn’t around to whip you,” he said, without looking at me. “But it was a beautiful funeral.”

Some people just can’t help themselves.

And then I punched him for the second time. Same spot. Same result. He never saw it coming, again.

He didn’t move for twenty minutes.

I don’t remember what exactly moved me to attack Miles. I didn’t overly care about the art teach, although he had no business making fun of her, and I wasn’t a huge fan of my father and what he did. Neither of them alone, nor together, would’ve burned me so badly to act out.

Perhaps I simply came across someone who needed to be unseated, and I had the opportunity right then and there. Or perhaps it was the behind-the-scenes acts of kindness I saw from my grandfather over the years, lending a helping hand to those who needed it most, although I’d learn over time that there was no such thing as a Bennington gift without strings. Not this time, however; Miles deserved to fall hard in spite of Mrs. Bell’s despair.

Years later, I punched him a third time at a wedding reception for one our Eden Falls neighbors. He quickly learned the moral of that story—never provoke a drunken man with a God complex. Unfortunately, I learned a lesson that day as well—adults who hit other adults usually end up in handcuffs. But that wasn’t the first time, and if I live right, it won’t be the last.

Like a little boy and his dog, I’ve owned Miles Crutcher since that day at Cornerstone Academy.

I suspect the hatred is mutual, and I can find no reason on earth why he would keep his family in that same house in Eden Falls, a reminder of what could’ve been—a reminder of his failure to uphold the family’s legacy.

The day I bought his family’s bank, I personally delivered a bottle of champagne to his high-rise office.

“I’m not going to fire you,” I said, crossing my feet on his desk. “One day, I will call in a favor from you. I don’t know what it is yet, but one day, it will happen. And you’ll deliver.”

I just didn’t know until recently how I’d use him in my big plan.

His expression never changed, and he never said a single word.

I reached over and grabbed the champagne from his hand and finished it off.

“Be ready,” I said.

Those were the last words I spoke to him until four months ago when I made a surprise visit to that same overpriced office.

Over the following three weeks, I made daily visits each afternoon to hash out the details of my plan. The favor was called, and Miles reacted surprisingly well.

His story may end well after all. But I could care less if it doesn’t.

*****

With a nine iron in hand, Darius addresses a fallen apple between two rows of trees in the orchard. He takes aim at a wooden barrel at the end of the line.

Leaning against a low branch, I wave to the pearl white Mercedes SUV as it slowly navigates up the bluff. I’m not certain, but from a distance it looks like the driver returns a one-fingered salute. I laugh under my breath and give him the benefit of the doubt.

“How are you sure he’s not going to screw you?” asks Darius as he starts his backswing.

The half-rotten apple goes sailing down the orchard, hooking left as it quickly disintegrates midflight.

“Don’t think we’ll be seeing you on the Tour anytime soon,” I say.

“I’m being serious,” he says. “How do you know he’s not going to turn on you, or that he already hasn’t?”

He sets the club against a tree and crosses his arms, a smile nowhere in sight. It’s a familiar death stare from my long-time confidant.

“I made him give me some assurances.”

“If there is anyone in this world that has incentive to cross you, it’s Miles Crutcher. There’s no one left in his family to keep him in line, for better or worse, and I bet he only has about two years left before he has to dump the house and move out. Let’s just say he has plenty of reason to turn this whole thing sideways.”

“I appreciate your wise counsel,” I say.

He doesn’t laugh and his expression remains unchanged, although his brow furrows more intently.

“Look,” I say. “There’s a bit more to it than that. It’s better for you if I keep you distanced from the whole story.”

“We’ve never worked that way.”

He waves his arms and his frustration is clear.

“I know, but this time it’s different,” I reply.

“If I don’t know all the facts, I can’t help you.” He brushes my left shoulder as he walks past me on the way back to the house. “Maybe it’s time I let you bathe in your own ruin.”

Unfortunately for him, I know he wouldn’t allow that to happen. Just another tantrum.

“You have to trust me on this, Darius. Have I ever let you down?”

Before the words are barely out of my mouth, he says, “Yes, several times, in fact.”

“That’s fair,” I concede. “But that was a long time ago. And that wasn’t technically me. It was my father. Besides, everything worked out just fine for you.”

For years, Darius has always had a beef with my father, and therefore me, although it only surfaces now when we disagree.

After finally accepting the idea that Darius and I were going to be best friends—the shock that went through the Bennington clan when their eldest male son befriended a colored boy worlds and classes apart—he decided he’d do the noble thing by funding a class jump for Darius. But not for Rodney or the rest of his siblings. Only Darius. That would be too much to ask.

With admission in hand the day before the first day of classes, Darius learned a life lesson at an early age that has served him well. Never trust anyone; not even those closest to you.

That was the day the real shot rippled through the Bennington household and everything I’d ever known. That was the day he took his own life.

Not only did he leave a bewildered family in mourning, but he also left a young man without hope.

Ready to take the world by storm, and with the promise of tuition to another one of the city’s best private schools—but definitely not through the pristine gates of Cornerstone Academy—Darius was left out on his own little Island, hardly a young man, without an elder guide to help mold his athletic gifts and intelligence.

Even though I had many disagreements with my father while he was alive, I’ve always admired that gesture to Darius, even with all of its shortcomings. Unfortunately, that same sentiment wasn’t echoed through the rest of my family.

I’m not sure if it was the mourning, the shock, or whether they truly were a bunch of bigoted jackasses. Whatever it was, they left Darius out to dry at the expense of their fourteen year old son.

I ultimately forgave my family, mainly my mother, but what other choice did I have? I had nowhere else to go. It was all I’d ever known, and even though they tried to talk sense into me, I knew it was all wrong.

Darius and I didn’t speak that entire school year. Talk about a great kickoff to high school.

“You’ll always think you know better,” he says. “You and your sick god complex.”

“You have too much to lose here,” I say. “What’s going down soon will destroy everything.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Exactly. And you shouldn’t be involved. I’ve had a good run, and hopefully after everything shakes out, I’ll still be going.”

“And you don’t have anything to lose,” he asks.

His question goes unanswered.

Darius gives an unenthusiastic wave of the hand and retreats to the shade under the canopy of a large oak tree behind the house.

“But this, as we know it,” I say, my open palms revealing the estate, “will never be the same. Changes are rolling in.”