An Incidental Reckoning by Greg Walker

without incident and drove towards Tanville, flush with the small victory and eager to celebrate with the one person that could appreciate it.
     
    But as the excitement faded, as his pulse slowed and the sweat in his shirt dried, Will felt hollow, like a coward, failing to overcome that singular dragon he had come out to slay. But he could not find the courage to go back and wait until Brody came home. The Idea of Brody loomed large in his mind, a nemesis that had only grown since high school, his reach extending across decades. If anything, he would be far worse, more powerful, his cruelty and viciousness honed by his time in prison, sharpened through contact with men like himself and worse. And Will had done nothing to prepare himself for any event that required physical confrontation.
     
    He went back home, back to Erie, and went through the motions of what remained of his life, but he felt sure that everyone – his customers, the girl at the checkout counter, the man walking his dog on the other side of the street – could all see inside him, see the ingredients of shame and fear comprising the coward that walked among them, had already weighed and found him wanting. He slogged through the winter, trying to forge ahead but the nearness of the thing that he had set in motion but failed to finish worked at him like stones in his pocket, another added each day until he bowed under its weight.
     
    In March, with the date of the camping trip set, he drove back to Tanville and slipped an envelope into Brody’s mailbox and sped away. It read:
     

     
    I’m the guy that wrecked your car. I’ll be at Ravensburg State Park the second weekend of May if you want to discuss it.
     

     
    He didn’t include that he had acquired a pistol, nor did he explain that he wouldn’t be alone; either to Brody, or to Jon. But Jon belonged there, too, so that they could finally make things right. He had second thoughts and sleepless nights afterward, ultimately glad that the note was now irretrievable, the only option left not to show up. He grappled with fear, waves that would hit him without warning when he forgot and then remembered the looming deadline. Several times he nearly contacted Jon, to call off the camping trip. But in the end, the gun made the difference. No matter what nature of devil Stape might be, he wasn’t bulletproof.
     

     
    When the bikers had pulled into the camp, he had expected instant recognition if one proved to be Stape, all the while his heart beating double time. But the article he had read did not include a picture to detail the changes in his nemesis since high school. The gun had been tucked away in his duffel bag in the car since his arrival, a reassuring presence of which he kept an image of in his mind. He only planned to use it as leverage, not to actually shoot anyone; to speak in a language that Brody could understand.
     
    If Brody came, he had always visualized him alone, not with a companion. And he couldn’t be sure that the smaller man was in fact Brody Stape. He seemed about the right size, but leaner, and the lines and hair on his face effectively disguising any trace of the boy he had known, if the word boy had ever applied to him, a creature of another class entirely. In the movie that played in his head, Brody drove right up to their campsite, got out of a car, and asked directly if one of them had left the note in his mailbox. He hadn’t considered anything like this. He watched for Jon's reaction, waited for him to ask in a strained voice if the guy reminded him of someone, but either Jon did not recognize him, or chose not to.
     
    Will waited, his gut a cauldron of anxiety, and when the man had come over to confront them, the ridiculous bit about their laughing, he looked hard for Brody Stape, but the firelight revealed so little. And then, when they had moved their motorcycles he wanted to shout out Brody's name. But he kept silent. Brody didn’t have a corner on harassing