Son of Destruction by Kit Reed Page A

either, not with his siblings idling in there, sour and mismatched, the moth and the toad. You can hear the TV from here. Instead he lingers, listening to the light breeze playing in his grandfather’s stand of Australian pines. In the Twenties these trees were as common as pig’s tracks, but the big freeze took out most of them and the ancient towering pines on the Chaplin property line are among the last. They dwarf the house. All his life Bobby has loved the dry rasp of wind in dead pine needles: the sound of something that he knows is coming, but can not yet name.
    In fact what Bobby hears coming is a car, but he doesn’t register until it stops and someone gets out. Startled, he whirls. ‘Nenna?’
    It isn’t her. A young man in a new Florida shirt pulls down the brim on his airport Panama to hide whatever he may be feeling. Polite enough. Puzzled. ‘Sir?’
    ‘Are you looking for me?’ He won’t recognize the spike of hope in Bobby’s voice.
    ‘I’m not sure. I’m looking for . . .’
    ‘Bob Chaplin. Goldman Sachs?’ He’s lost everything that he used to be, but Bobby still has that strong handshake.
    ‘You’re a broker then.’
    ‘Was.’
    The young man considers. ‘Then, no.’
    ‘Oh. You must be lost,’ Bobby says, disappointed.
    ‘Not exactly. GPS.’
    Of course. Confident post-millennial dude, fully equipped. There’ll be a laptop and a digicam in the backpack, enough DVDs to let him fly home without getting bored; smartphone in the pocket of the Florida shirt. It hasn’t been that long since Bobby himself lived in the high end, high velocity, high tech working world – color copiers, CD and DVD burners, extra screens so you can do everything at once. Blackberry, iPhone, which is the phone of choice? He’s lost track. He rocks with homesickness for all that. Whoever this kid is, he probably thinks Bobby is retired, as in, over with. Nice old fud tending his front walk.
I’m not that old!
‘iPad.’
What am I forgetting?
‘WiFi booster.’ He adds, to establish his credentials, ‘Next-generation everything.’
    ‘Pretty much.’ Nice grin. Nice looking kid, sandy hair, not from around here, too pale. Tourist, probably, fresh off the plane.
    It’s not half-bad, standing out here with him. If Nenna comes along she’ll see that he is by no means Mr Lonely Guy. He has other people in his life. Nice kid, Bobby thinks. If we hit it off, ask if he’d like to meet for a drink later, down at the club. The psychic accident that brought Bobby back to Fort Jude makes him reluctant to look up old acquaintances but it would be extremely cool to walk into the Fort Jude Club with this personable young guy from up north. Don’t just stand here, start the conversation. It would be rude to ask what he’s doing in Pine Vista, where tourists never come.
    Bobby says what you say to outsiders. ‘I bet you’re enjoying our sun.’
    ‘What? Oh. Yeah, I guess.’ The young man isn’t attending to the conversation, not really. He’s studying the house. If they were in a horror movie he’d see Maggie Chaplin’s pale face bobbing at the window; she never goes out. In real life Al Junior could wander out on the porch any minute now, scratching the wedge of belly where his T-shirt has ceased to meet his jeans. To Bobby’s relief the face of the house stays blank.
    ‘Oh,’ Bobby says. ‘You came to see the house. It’s a kind of a landmark.’
    ‘The house.’ Whoever he is, the kid jerks to attention. ‘Is that your house?’
    Oh God, don’t ask him if he wants to look around inside. Not with things the way they are.
‘If you’re a contractor, we’re not looking to renovate right now.’
    ‘I’m not.’
    ‘Who are you, anyway?’
    Now the kid tilts back the hat to prove that he has nothing to hide. He has a very sweet grin. ‘Nobody you’d know.’
    ‘I guess I mean, what are you doing out here in Pine Vista?’
    ‘Is this Pine Vista?’
    Bobby says drily, ‘It was supposed to