He has his phone out, ready to call 911, but first needs to find out if this boy is alive.
He kneels next to him, gently turns him over.
Sees who it is.
Sees the boy smiling up at him.
Then laughing.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Silas asks angrily.
“Joke’s on you, boss man,” the kid says.
Cocky as ever.
A second too late, Silas sees the gun in the kid’s hand, pointing up at him, the last thing Silas Tucker sees in this world before the kid shoots him in the face.
Then the chest.
Then the face again, before Silas is the one in the road, dead before he hits it, even though that doesn’t stop the kid, who keeps firing until he’s emptied the gun, laughing again as he watches the body jump every time.
When he’s finished, he sees one car in the distance, maybe a half mile up, heading toward them on the flat country road.
Now he’s the one kneeling next to Silas Tucker, taking his billfold, not for the cash inside it or the credit cards.
He just wants a souvenir of this special day.
His first kill.
PART ONE
TEN YEARS LATER
ONE
I LOOK AROUND the Blue Yonder bar, the place maybe ten miles outside of campus on 501, look at my grandma and all my friends from Cross Rivers and so many of my Tar Heel teammates, and think about the one who’s not here tonight, and should be.
My father, Silas Tucker. No one ever called him Silas Sr. when he was still around. He was just Silas. Or, at Cross Rivers High, Mr. Tucker.
I’m about the same size as he was, big for a quarterback and big enough so that it’s been a long time since anybody even thought about calling me Junior.
The only nickname that people use on me now is “109.” That’s how fast I once threw a pitch. The fastest, by a few miles an hour, that anybody had ever thrown a baseball—in high school or college or the big leagues or anywhere.
I could’ve gone straight to the big leagues from Cross Rivers High throwing like that. But no matter how hard I tried, I’d just never loved baseball the way I do football. Not enough action, even as the pitcher.
It’s why I quit baseball. After my junior year in high school, Ifocused on being a quarterback, where I could throw it and run it and even get a lick in on a would-be tackler when the opportunity presented itself. For my dad, I was determined to win an NCAA football title, even if it took all four years of my eligibility. By my final year, I was playing at such a high level that I passed and ran our Tar Heels to our first national championship and ended up the number-one overall pick by the Steelers in the NFL draft.
For the first time in a very long time, the Steelers had lost enough games the season before to win the rights to me. It’s why tomorrow morning I’m flying to Pittsburgh—well, theSteelersare flying me up there on a private jet.
The party tonight is about that.
And about me.
I’ve even been allowed to use my own playlist, though I’m the only one who knows how much of it is my father’s old playlist, a lot of the songs spinning on old vinyl of his that I’d kept.
I don’t have to wonder when music became as important to me as it did—it was in those first days and weeks and months after my father died, and music was a way for me to escape and take away some of the ache of missing him, like I was escaping into a whole other world. Play some of his music and pretend that he was still in the other room.
Right now, the sound system is blaring Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On,” because as much as my father loved his country music, he liked old-time rock and roll, too:
