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PUNK-ASS BITCH.
Blake ignored his Thoughts. When you hear something like that a million times, it loses meaning. Or it sinks in so deep you don’t even notice it, like a clock ticking on the wall.
The Thoughts lived in Blake’s head from the very beginning. When he was five, he talked back to them. He’d be up in his attic room playing games with them, like Chutes and Ladders. They were friendly, told him he was smart. That he was a good boy. The Thoughts were Blake’s best friend. His parents figured it was just an imaginary friend. That it was normal. Healthy, they said.
But the Thoughts changed when Blake was eighteen, wanted him to do things he didn’t want to do. Wanted things he shouldn’t want to do. That’s when Blake started ignoring them, but he’d lived with them all his life. And they didn’t like being pushed aside. He tried to make them go away with booze and dope and sometimes that worked, but they always came back. Some say Blake Barnes just up and went crazy one day. If you asked Blake, he’d tell you he just couldn’t take it anymore.
Motherfucker.
Now he was on his back. Snow had drifted over him. He was beyond cold. Shivers had racked his body like electricity, but that was over now. They ended... he couldn’t remember how long ago they ended. How long had he even been lying in the snow? Two hours? Eight? Funny, he didn’t know that, either.
Blake had maxed out his credit cards buying climbing gear in Portland. The debt collectors could kiss his ice cold ass. He also bought a Range Rover. It had in-dash GPS, satellite radio, seat warmers and a dashboard that talked. Fucking classy. He drove up to Mt. Hood and left it at the Timberline Lodge with the keys in the ignition for some lucky bastard. Finders keepers.
The sky was gray when he left the automobile running in the parking lot. The top of Mt. Hood swirled with clouds driven by searing wind that could clean the chrome off a set of Craftsman. He had started the climb without seeing a single person. Nobody in their right mind would climb in that weather. Unless they had the Thoughts living in their head.
About a thousand feet up, Blake passed two retreating climbers crusted with snow. They warned him. Called him crazy. Me? Crazy? One of them grabbed Blake. “It’s suicide, man. You got a death wish?” The climber tried to force him back with them until Blake connected with a right hook above the guy’s ear. Pain lanced the back of his hand. He broke a knuckle, but it was a sweet punch. Put that asshole on his back. Made the Thoughts giggle.
“Go on, kill yourself,” the guy said.
We will.
Five hundred more feet up the mountain, the blizzard was all around him. The wind had scrubbed his cheeks raw and flattened his lungs. He thought maybe he remembered the sulfuric smell of Devil’s Kitchen, maybe even made it to the base of Hogsback Ridge before time got hazy. Or maybe he fell down after he clocked that climber.
It won’t be long now.
Freezing to death ain’t so bad, really. At first it sucked, sure, but after the body ate up all its energy, there was nothing left to shiver and everything went numb. It was kind of pleasant, really, like half a dozen pills. The Thoughts were still muttering because those motherfuckers never shut up, but even they were getting drowsy. Maybe they would go to sleep for once. That’s why Blake took the trip, after all.
A hang glider appeared in the snow. Blake had been comfortably numb for a long time, even thought his eyelashes had crusted over, but there it was, a goddamn hang glider. He found the strength to sit up. The wind was still blowing, but wasn’t so cold. In fact, it was sort of balmy. He climbed on quite nimbly, pushed off the side of the mountain like he’d hang glided all his life and soared out of the storm and away from Mt. Hood. Away from the Thoughts.
Below was a thick green forest and above puffy skies. White cotton tore off the clouds, snagged on the glider and stuck to his face. It tasted like cotton candy. Vanilla-flavored. He went in and out, poking holes in the sides of the clouds, harvesting light, fluffy goodies in his outstretched hands and shoving them down his gullet like he was seven years old again, walking through the fairgrounds.
Blake saw his house. It was nestled in the woods, smoke leaking out the chimney. He bought the cabin ten years earlier for next to nothing because everything was cheap in the middle of nowhere. And that’s where Blake wanted to be, miles away from everyone and everything. Trees didn’t talk back. And if an animal got in your business you could stick a gun up its ass and blow the lunch out of its mouth. No law against that.
Blake mixed with people like ketchup and ice cream. Too bad he couldn’t outrun the Thoughts. In fact, they just got louder now that they had Blake all to themselves. Wanting this, wanting that, go here, do this, fuck that. They whispered when he hunted so as not to startle the deer. They shut up when he made the kill and dressed it right there. They hummed, like that fat Willie Wonka kid swimming in chocolate. Sometimes they told him to do things to the carcass, like cut the eyes out and piss in the skull. Blake refused. That was sick. But then they wouldn’t shut up. So, you know.
They listened to pain. Like when he put a hot iron on his leg, oh, they listened, all right. Once he hung himself from a doorknob and jerked off until he blacked out. They shut up for the rest of the night. He hung himself from the doorknob a dozen more times, but they got bored after a while, so he pounded ten-penny nails through his hand, pulled a molar out with pliers and even peeled a fingernail off his little finger. But they always got bored. That’s when Blake came up with the Mt. Hood idea.
Blake was afraid seeing the cabin might wake the Thoughts up. He might be insane, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he was hallucinating. But just to be safe, he steered away from the cabin. He just wanted to go to sleep, drift off in a nice and numb blackness, go back to that feeling when he was tiny, suckling on his momma’s satisfying tit. Everything was going to plan and he didn’t want the Thoughts fucking it up.
Blake turned the hang glider for Las Vegas. He hadn’t been to Vegas in years. In fact, the last time he’d been to Vegas was... well, right before he moved to the cabin. He took all the money and played blackjack, craps, and slots. Stuffed his winnings in women’s panties. Sade was a plastic-titty stripper. He must’ve shoved a thousand dollars down her shorts that week. She didn’t really thank him, either, besides grind his lap until he shot a load in his pants. For shit sake, a thousand bucks should’ve at least got him a hand job. The Thoughts wanted Blake to teach the whore a lesson, something along the lines of pissing in her skull. That’s why Blake left for the country. Ketchup and ice cream.
The Vegas strip illuminated the sky. Blake brought the glider down, figured to make a landing and hit the first club running. He could hear the traffic, wondered if a shot of whiskey would buzz him up, even if it was imaginary. Hell, he could do all the coke he wanted. He could teach Sade a lesson, too. You know, chop her goddamn head off. Nothing illegal about pretending to do that.
The Vegas lights flickered. He’d have to hurry if he was going to get to Sadie. No telling how long the hallucination would last. He never believed there was life after death, so he needed to do it before his body froze solid. The glider spun, aimed at the hood of a BMW pulling up to the Bellagio. He’d impale the car, maybe the driver, too.
But he didn’t spear the car. Didn’t even land on the strip. The pavement turned to black water and the police sirens sounded like insects. City lights dimmed and the sun was setting on the far end of a marsh. Blake crashed in a wetland.
No.
Not only did the dream get off track, he landed in the Lowcountry, the last fucking place on Earth Blake wanted to be. That was the whole goddamn point of Oregon. He took an oath never to set foot in South Carolina again. He was born there but for shit sake he wasn’t going to die there, even in a dream. He tried to get the glider running again, but the pluff mud pulled at his feet. Blake went face first into the mud, sucking him down into the smelly, wet ground. Fuck it, he wasn’t going to die in a shitty hallucination.
His eyelashes crunched. Snow had completely covered his face. He wasn’t numb anymore. He was smoking ass hot, in the last throes of hypothermia as the blood vessels constricted. He pissed all over himself, too.
Why the hell did he have to end up in the Lowcountry? That hallucination was going just fine but ended like his whole life had gone. Just shitty. Blake couldn’t catch a break. He was born with the Thoughts and he’d die with them. For once he just wanted to feel happy, but he couldn’t even do that right. The Thoughts were right, he deserved to die like a pig. And he deserved to die more painfully. The Thoughts wanted him to shoot his balls off or stick his head in the fireplace. Freezing to death was too easy. But it wasn’t too late.
Blake pulled himself up. His piss-frozen pants crunched. Blake fumbled at his coat, trying to undo it but his fingers were like wooden pegs. He wanted to feel Death’s hand around his throat, wanted to feel Death rip the last breath from him like a bullet or pull his guts out with cold hands. He deserved that for the shit he’d done. The Thoughts woke up, adrenaline dumping into his flattened veins. That’s the spirit!
A black hand touched Blake’s stiff fingers.
Blake’s eyes filled with water. He blinked several times. Was he hallucinating, again? Yeah, he must be still laying in the snow, dreaming he stood up trying to take his clothes off. He blinked again. It didn’t feel like a dream, though. Maybe he was wrong about the afterlife. Maybe he was already dead.
A boy stood in front of him, dressed like it was July. His black shirt fluttered violently in the wind.
“Am I dreaming?” Blake asked.
The boy shook his head. His lips moved, but Blake couldn’t hear him. His skin was thick, but not wrinkled. Maybe he wasn’t a boy, but something about his eyes, his clear blue eyes, looked innocent. Blake was lying in the snow, for real this time. The boy hovered over him, his nostrils flaring. The boy’s touch was somehow colder than the air.
“Are you an angel?” Blake asked.
The boy spoke into his ear. “Of sorts.”
An angel. Of course, he was the Angel of Death. Blake hadn’t thought it would be so literal, an actual boy coming for him, but then again this was his first time dying. Somehow he pictured Death wearing a black cloak on a fire-spitting black horse. Big fangs. The stink of death preceding him like a rotting corpse. Turned out Death was a boy with a respectful disposition. Who would’ve guessed?
He took Blake’s hand away and unbuckled the top of his coat. The wind rushed inside, down his neck and over his chest. He couldn’t feel much, though. Numbness returned. The boy massaged Blake’s chest. It began to hurt.
“I don’t want to live.” Blake grabbed his arm, tears swelled in his eyes. “I don’t deserve it.”
The boy didn’t blink. Blake somehow knew he wasn’t trying to save him. He was beyond that. The boy was helping him die. Of course, he was. He was Death. The boy continued rubbing as if it were a ritual. The Thoughts in Blake’s head faded. Goodbye, fuckhead. He saw the Lowcountry marsh again. The sun had nearly set on the horizon, only a sliver of the orange disc left. Blake felt the sticky mud wrap around his ankles. He saw the messes he left in South Carolina. The people he hurt. The things he’d done.
Blake’s lips hardly moved. “Do me a favor.”
The boy looked annoyed.
“Find my family. Tell them... tell them I’m sorry.”
Blake knew the angel heard. He imagined the Lowcountry wetlands as if to draw him a map. He imagined the house he left behind.
His breaths were numbered. The boy’s hands got colder. It felt like he was breathing through his chest, now. Like his breath was going directly into the boy’s palms. His chest continued to expand like he was still breathing, but it was getting slower. Shallower. He couldn’t feel his heart anymore. But at least the Thoughts were gone. For once in his life, gone for good. Blake was right to bring them to this mountain. For once, he got something right.
Blake Barnes passed from life on Mt. Hood. His last breath wasn’t violently ripped from his mouth but leaked from his lips. His body was below him. The boy hovered over it, his hands pressed on his sternum like he was about to administer CPR. The wind had no effect, passing through him on another plane. Up, he went, the body far below. Blake was going wherever dead people go, but not before he heard one last thing. It could’ve been one last Thought come to haunt him, but it sounded more like the boy.
“Thank you,” he said.
And just before the mountain and the snow and the world faded, he took what he came for.
Annie started the midnight shift. It was her second one that day.
She wiped her hands and grabbed the coffee pot to make the rounds. Ernie Crites, a fat man who spent half his life wearing out the stool near the cash register, smiled at her with egg in his mustache. Ernie started a conversation while she topped his coffee mug. Something about bowling. Ernie was a good tipper, so she listened. She was nodding, but she was looking to the end of the counter where a kid stared into his cup. Ernie noticed. He tried to change the subject, talked about what Annie was doing when she got off her shift.
Annie walked off, mid-Ern-sentence, and filled the kid’s cup. “Need anything else?”
The kid snapped out of his thoughts, noticing Annie with steam rising out of the pot. She hadn’t seen him around. He exuded charm like a fragrance. Annie leaned against the counter, wondering if he was older than she thought. His skin was dark, like it had been exposed to endless sun. She could feel the warmth.
She was going to ask if he was new in town; she hadn’t seen him at the Waffle House. But then she forgot what she was doing. His eyes were mostly pupil, outlined by a sliver of blue, like the black was swallowing the irises. She could see her reflection, in a three-dimensional sort of way, like they were liquid pools. She leaned in a few more inches, studied the details of her reflection. The Waffle House disappeared around her. There was no sound. Only her reflection.
Annie jerked backed, shook her head. It felt like she was doused with ice water.
“Sleeping on the job, Annie?” Ernie the fat man said.
The kid stared back into his cup. She picked up the coffee. Steam was no longer rising from the pot. She put it back on the hot plate. Who screwed with the air conditioner?
The kid finished his coffee and slid the cup across the counter, placed a crisp bill on top and started for the door. Ernie spun on his stool and stuck his foot out. The kid politely stopped. Ernie mumbled something to him, pulling his belt up under his belly, snorting a layer of phlegm back in his throat. He was going to sort out some business with this shit. Maybe because he was black, maybe because he was jealous. Or maybe just because.
Annie was fishing forks out of a basket. She had never accepted a ride from him, but that didn’t stop him from trying. And if she didn’t get over there, there’d be a fight. They’d thrown Ernie out of the Waffle House once before. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have to eat midnight eggs down at the Huddle House.
But Ernie stopped. In fact, he froze like he forgot what he was going to say and went back to his plate. The kid walked off, opened the door for a customer and left. Annie took his plate and wiped the counter.
“How many times I got to tell you, Ern?”
“What?”
“You hassling customers like that.”
He wiped his mouth and threw the napkin on the plate. She couldn’t tell if he heard her or was just dumb. She cleared off all the abandoned plates. When she reached the end of the counter, she pulled a bill off a cold coffee cup. She snapped it tight and held it up to make sure she read the zeros right. Annie could see the kid through the humidity-streaked windows. He crossed the street. No luggage. No backpack. And in no hurry.
“Where’d you get that?” Ernie asked.
She folded the bill in her pocket. “That kid left it.”
Ernie shrugged, jammed a toothpick between his teeth. He is dumb.
Tea was a full sensory drink, but not sweet tea.
Drayton had been in Europe for the past century and developed an appreciation for Earl Grey. He figured if Americans could make decent tea, it would be in the South where plantations were within walking distance. The waitress couldn’t hide her smirk when he’d asked for Earl Grey. We got unsweet, she said.
Annie had worked at the Waffle House for six months. She was a big reason Drayton was there, she just didn’t know it yet. That would come soon enough. Drayton made the mistake of looking at her when she filled his cup and she was quickly drawn in. He didn’t try to mesmerize her. The simple-minded did it to themselves. He dropped the temperature around her to break the trance. It was a simple energy trick he learned centuries ago. His body became an energy sink, absorbing vibrations from the molecules around him.
Drayton wanted to reach the coast by sunrise.
When day broke, Drayton was somewhere south of Charleston on a dirt road watching the sun rise above the wetlands. The light danced in the murky water that wandered through the reeds. Mosquitoes landed on his arms and probed his midnight skin. Maybe he started his existence with white skin, he couldn’t remember that far back. Either way, centuries of exposure to the sun had blackened his flesh. No matter what color it was or had become, there had never been blood under it.
It took six months to walk from Mt. Hood to the Lowcountry, but it wasn’t exhaustion that weighed on Drayton. Blake Barnes was insane, no doubt. His personality was split in two, one side feeding on the other. He heard voices and couldn’t take it. Maybe if Blake lived another couple hundred years he would’ve understood his insanity. His thoughts would’ve died out with understanding. After all, it took Drayton two hundred years to understand his own dysfunction and find peace. Humans didn’t have that luxury.
But there was no guarantee he would have found peace.
Drayton didn’t murder Blake Barnes. He only took the last few moments of his life. He showed no prejudice – fat, skinny, black, white, republican, democrat – he took from them all. They often mistook him for the Angel of Death, but Drayton wasn’t sure what he was. Maybe he was Death and no one told him. He just knew he’d lived so long he couldn’t remember when, where, or how his life began. Or why.
Tell my family I’m sorry.
There was a time when he ignored all last requests but figured he owed his victims something for taking the last of their life, didn’t he? He hated to call them victims, but that’s what they were; they were all victims. The essence he craved was a silky energy that permeated every human being. He could absorb it just being near them, leave a man, woman or child an empty shell. It wasn’t like the old days when he tore out their throats and devoured them as they begged and pleaded. Back then, he ignored them, even laughed. That was how the whole vampire legend started. But Drayton didn’t have fangs or hide from crosses. He didn’t know what he was.
Even still, they were all victims.
He honored requests for a reason. Atonement. But if he got honest, drop dead on your knees honest, he did it because he wasn’t really sure what happened to the victims after he took their essence. If Drayton died like them, would he go there, too? He wasn’t human, not really. But did he have a soul? And if there was a God, Drayton figured he would have plenty to atone for. There wasn’t a lawyer alive that would defend him. Nor should they.
He’d sent millions of people to the other side and had yet to see evidence of heaven or hell. If there was, so be it. He didn’t ask to be born. He didn’t want to live and live and live. He didn’t atone so that he could go to heaven or avoid hell. He atoned because he believed there was a balance in the universe. He atoned because that was the order of things.
When the sun had fully risen, a mud-spattered truck roared past him, close enough the side view mirror nearly clipped him.
Drayton started down the dirt road
Aaron Towgard thought he might’ve hit the guy. He didn’t want to kill the asshole, just fuck with him.
The dogs were boxed in the back. Aaron’s little brothers fought over the radio. He didn’t have time to take any of these idiots home. He was told to pick the check up at noon and not a minute later. He’d dicked around all morning and now it was damn near one o’clock.
He about took out a line of mailboxes thinking of an excuse to tell his old man, but then he turned the corner and, what’d you know, there was ole Bo closing up the mailbox. Today was his lucky day. Bo always managed to avoid Aaron, but there was nowhere to hide this time.
Aaron locked up the front tires and stopped inches from the mailbox. Bo jumped in the ditch, falling against a pine tree. The dogs yapped. “Shut up!” Aaron stepped out.
His brothers started climbing out. He told them to get back in the truck and pushed his hair under his hat.
“Hand me the check, Bo.”
“It’s in the mail box.”
“I know where it’s at. Hand it to me.”
“If you want it,” Bo said, “get it. I’m no delivery boy.”
“You are if I say you are.”
Bo plucked his white t-shirt nervously, then started back down the private drive.
“I’ll let the dogs loose,” Aaron said. “Give your horses a run. Summer heat and all.”
“What?” Bo turned, put his arms out. “You want me to come over just to hand you the check?”
“Now that tone right there isn’t helping you, Bo. It’s down right disrespectful. And you’re irritating the shit out of me. Now be a good delivery boy and do as you’re told.” He jabbed at the mailbox. “Deliver the fucking mail.”
Bo heaved a stick into the trees, cursed under his breath. He yanked out an unstamped envelope and slapped it in Aaron’s hand. “Erica wouldn’t be impressed.”
Bringing up Aaron’s ex-girlfriend hurt worse than a boot to the sack. Bo knew that. He also knew it was better to leave a hornet’s nest alone but sometimes you just wanted to see what was inside. Aaron snatched his skinny wrist before he could turn away.
“What’d you say?”
Bo tried to pull away. Aaron yanked and twisted in one fluid motion, throwing Bo into the truck. He cranked his arm up his back and ground his face into the muddy hood. The horn blared in their ears. Aaron’s little brothers bounced on the seat and he told them to cut the shit. His head was ringing.
“Next time I take the change out of your ass.”
He tossed him on the road. Bo wiped the mud off his lips and started to get up. Aaron planted his boot in the middle of his chest. If he had more time, he’d sling this weak piece of shit through the trees. Maybe set the dogs on him instead of the horses, get his heart racing, scratch him up a little.
“You get your jollies from this?” Bo said.
Aaron stepped on his chest. He snerked phlegm to back of his throat and let a it hang off his lip. Bo shook side to side. The tobacco-specked hocker rolled off in slow motion, stretching on a string. Bo twisted and squirmed. Aaron dropped the payload on Bo’s shaved head.
“Fuck you,” Bo said.
Aaron looked up at the sun. He was already in the shit. It wasn’t going to matter if he went straight home now or in another hour. He could make it worth it.
“Fuck me?”
He reached for the little bitch’s ear, all set to drag him across the road like his momma used to do in church when his stomach tightened. An involuntary knot twitched inside, like the feeling he got when his daddy stormed red-faced into the room. The dogs felt it, too. They went stone silent.
Something was in the woods.
Maybe Annie was coming down the drive with a rifle. Was she hiding in the trees? He rubbed his chest, could feel the crosshairs. Aaron walked to the edge of the road, looked through the trees. Bo stood with a muddy boot print on his white shirt, looked dumbly past the truck. Someone was a hundred yards down the road. It was the guy Aaron buzzed on the way here. Each step he took shook the knot in Aaron’s stomach that was now the size of an orange. Cold sweat broke across his forehead and the knot broke open like a foul egg.
Aaron puked.
Grits and eggs and gravy splattered like a bucket of mud. He put his hands on his knees, strings of spit draining in a puddle of vomit. Another wave drove him to his hands and knees until there was nothing left but thick, green slime. His little brothers didn’t honk the horn. They didn’t tell him to get up and kick the guy’s ass. The dogs didn’t make a sound.
A well-worn pair of boots stopped inches from his fingers. Aaron wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Still on his knees, he rose up straight and proud. It wasn’t no guy walking down the road, it was just some black kid no older than he was.
Aaron cleared his nostrils and looked up. “You lost?”
“You should go home and rest.” He spoke with a strange dialect, like he’d mixed Spanish and good old American. But underneath it was a Southern flavor—the twang of a home-cooked meal—just diluted many times over.
Aaron slowly straightened his hat. Nothing made a sound, not the dogs or bugs or wind or nothing. Aaron had been in situations like this. He was already in the shit with his daddy and this might get him out of it. After all, this unlucky fuck didn’t know where he was and Aaron was going to straight it out. He was more than his daddy’s delivery boy.
He could handle shit, too.
Aaron feigned sluggishness when he stood and wiped his mouth. He turned like he was going to the truck. He didn’t need his gun to scare this kid white. Old fashioned man power was all. With his hand already up, with his hips turned, he would strike. In a single, swift motion, he balled his fist and turned his hips.
But his hand didn’t move.
The muscles along his back tightened like 240-volts had been rammed up his ass. It was moments later that he could see again. He was on his knees, hands in the puddle of vomit, greasy bile pushing between his fingers. The kid had by the neck, pinching nerves that screamed down his legs. Panic swept through his belly and slammed into his balls. Belly.
“Move on.”
When Aaron could feel his legs again, he stumbled to the truck. His brothers stared out the window. He put the truck in gear and trenched the sandy road on his way out. In the rear view mirror, he was white and pasty. And the truck was starting to stink something fierce.
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DRAYTON KNEW A THING or two about hunting.
He didn’t need a bow, knife or rifle. Come, fear. Fill the belly. Aaron Towgard’s body obeyed, dumped adrenaline into the blood stream. Ernie just lost his appetite, but Drayton pushed harder on the boy. He emptied his guts and his bowels at the same time.
Drayton showed mercy. Maybe it was a mistake. The boy didn’t think of it as mercy, but an opportunity. He wasn’t accustomed to losing a fight. Like most simpletons, he believed real pain was meted out with skin and bone. Pain was delivered through the nervous system. No need to swing a fist. He squeezed the boy’s radial nerve below the elbow. The shock overwhelmed him. Drayton gave him time to recover, then pinched his brachial plexus near the base of his neck and introduced him to raw pain. He was a believer after that.
Bo picked at his shirt on the side of the road, breathing through his mouth while the truck’s muffler faded down the road. “Who are you?”
“Drayton.”
“You know where he’s going, Drayton? He’s going right back to his daddy’s house.” Bo picked at his shirt faster, not letting it fall to his chest before he picked it again. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you showing up and all, but I ain’t sure it’s going to help.”
“I’m looking for a place to stay.”
“I, uh...” He studied Drayton’s face—the thin lips, and deep, black eyes—and couldn’t remember what he was saying. Drayton took the opportunity to calm the boy’s nerves with a thought, to slow his heart and cool his flesh. When he stopped picking his shirt, Drayton looked away.
“Your home is a bed and breakfast, is it not?” Drayton asked.
“Uh.” Focus returned. “We haven’t had anyone stay in a while, but yeah.”
“I need a place to stay.”
Bo looked him up and down. “You live around here?”
“From out of town.”
“Visiting family or something?”
“Could see your quarters?”
Bo drifted back into his eyes, again. Drayton looked away, repeated the question. Bo shook his head, then nodded. He started down the shady drive, toeing the strip of stringy weeds growing between tire tracks. They walked for a full minute before they reached the end. Bo suddenly turned around.
“My name is Bo.”
Drayton considered his extended hand, thought twice, then shook it. His hand felt cold as well water in December. Bo shook back with a strange look but didn’t comment. He wiped his hand on his leg and walked around the bend. An old house sat on columns of brick pillars, the white paint peeling off the walls. Brown fences, paint peeling just the same, were beyond the house along with several paddocks filled with horses. Massive crape myrtles with sinewy trunks grew in the open, pink blooms poking through Spanish moss. Further back, live oaks reached out from the surrounding trees, their branches ancient and flexing. A wooden fence stretched between the barn and the house, a few of the boards hanging. Drayton dragged his feet through the tall grass. The smell of horse manure filled the humid air.
“You can go wait on the porch and get out of the sun if you want. Mama will be home any minute. She’ll get you set up.”
Bo went inside the barn. A tractor sputtered. An old quarter horse stuck his head out of one of the stalls, sniffed the air as if feeling Drayton’s eyes on him.
The frilly curtains dropped on one of the house windows. They were faded, almost yellow and nearly transparent. A shadow passed inside. Drayton climbed the wide steps to the porch wrapping around the house and peered inside. Someone moved in the back, disappeared around the corner. Drayton sat on one of the rocking chairs weaved from grapevine and bended saplings beneath a ceiling fan that pushed the heat around but not the flies.
All the horses were looking at him.
There was a boy on the porch.
Annie thought he looked familiar, but she hadn’t slept yet. This time of day played tricks with her eyes, so Annie stopped the car and viewed him like she did everyone else on her property. She threw the car in park and let the air-conditioner blow. The car was the only reprieve from summer. She adjusted the vents, listening to the belts squeal and studied him. His skin was unnaturally dark. Most African-Americans she knew were brown-skinned. This kid was black. He didn’t look up, just sat rocking in her grapevine chair.
Bo ambled through the long grass. Annie turned the car off and got the groceries out of the back seat. “He’s looking for a room,” Bo said.
“Where’s his parents?”
“He’s just visiting, says he’s by himself.”
He was still looking down when she stepped on the porch. She didn’t trust people that couldn’t look her in the eye, but he did it in a way of respect, like he wouldn’t dare challenge her for control. A high school kid looking for a room? Hardly seemed right, but Annie was on her own when she was about the same age. She knew what it was like to scuffle.
She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d seen him before.
There was shouting inside the house.
Bo was explaining. The shouts turned to murmurs. We need the money. That was the trump card. Although Annie was the only one arguing otherwise, even she couldn’t over play that one. They needed money.
Drayton suggested with a thought that Annie forget she’d seen him at the Waffle House, otherwise this would all be too suspicious. He looked innocent enough, but plenty of good predators do. And Drayton was the greatest predator of all. If they knew what he was, there would be no room available, end of discussion. Not like that would matter.
He rocked silently, watching the shadows creep across the yard. The horses grazed, occasionally looking at Drayton. There was something comforting about the scene. He explored his memories to see if he had been here before. He could remember back a hundred years like yesterday, but after that the memories were long-past ghosts of another life, like an old man remembering the thrill of a first kiss. Try that when you’re a thousand years old. Or however old he was.
The screen door smacked against the wall and clapped back in the door frame. Annie carried a leather book and sat on a porch swing. She opened the ledger on her lap and tapped her pencil. She plied her Waffle House customers with Southern charm the same way she’d sweeten a biscuit with jam. But on her property, she carried her heritage like a stick. Don’t tread on me.
“You got a name?”
“Drayton.”
“That’s your birth name?”
“That’s a nickname.”
She slowly flipped the pencil and erased her entry. “I need your birth name.”
“Drayton will do.”
“You don’t understand, young man. I need your birth name.”
Drayton’s birth name was probably the only thing he remembered from the early days. He didn’t want to forget it because someone gave it to him, even if he couldn’t remember where it came from or who gave it to him. He didn’t use it often because, quite frankly, no one cared for foreigners in America these days. Nor did they care for funny names.
“Nassfau.”
Annie scribbled in the book. “You’ve got a last name, don’t you?”
“Rauttu,” Drayton said. “Nassfau Rauttu.”
“Let me see an ID.” She looked over her wire glasses, sprigs of kinky gray hair around the frames.
“I don’t have identification.”
Annie narrowed her eyes, rethinking the whole thing. Yeah, they needed the money, but what good would it do if he caved her skull in. She had enough people trying to hurt her. Drayton let her look deep into his eyes. She fought the temptation, like everyone did, but soon found herself soaking in his soothing glance. It allowed him the opportunity to see inside.
He detected something all mortals shared in common, something found on battlefields. She was dying and didn’t know it. A tumor. He took a short whiff. It was small, just forming. She had plenty of time, two years, maybe three, before it would start affecting her memory and balance. It was hard to tell, so many variables. There was no sense in telling her, she was better off living in this moment than worrying about it. And, judging by the wrinkles around her mouth, there was plenty to think about already.
Drayton looked away. Annie blinked quickly, tears forming. She composed herself, writing the word slowly.
“Rauttu?” she said. “You Chinese or something?”
“I have some Chinese in me.” Drayton grinned so faintly his lips barely moved. “Drayton’s actually my middle name,” he said. “If you want to write that down.”
“Well Drayton may be a Southern name, but it don’t make you so.” She turned the pencil over, erased the last name before adding the middle name. “Nassfau Drayton Rauttu.”
“Drayton.”
“All right, Drayton. How many nights?”
“A week. Maybe longer.”
Annie raised her eyebrows. “What’d you plan on doing here for a week?”
“Rest.”
She looked around the yard, wondering what the hell a teenage-looking kid would do.
“That’ll be $300 with a $100 deposit.” She went back to scribbling. “I don’t take credit cards and I don’t take checks.”
Drayton peeled four bills off a roll and placed them on her book. She stopped scribbling, watched him put the money back in his pocket. He could rent the room for months. Maybe years.
She stared at the bills on her ledger. “Why are you here?”
“I have business.”
“You dealing drugs?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then what’s a boy like you doing with a wad of cash like that.”
“I’ve invested well.”
“Then what’s your business?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, your hospitality is appreciated.”
She watched the bills as if they’d sprout teeth and tear through her faded floral blouse. The ceiling fan made them tremble on the page. She gently placed her hand over them to make sure they didn’t sprout legs, too.
“You have a room for one week, Drayton. If I see anything I don’t like, you will leave my property with no refund. Do we have an agreement?”
“Indeed, we do.”
Annie snapped the book shut. “Come along.”
He took his time going into the house. No sense in rushing. Delivering Blake Barnes’s message wasn’t about words. He couldn’t stop by and tell them their deadbeat, runaway husband and father says he’s sorry. It wasn’t about that. Drayton had to deliver the message.
Sometimes it took a while to figure out what exactly the message was.
Drayton followed Annie past crooked pictures with dusty glass and family faces. Annie and her two boys and daughter. The daughter was the oldest, but she’d moved out a year earlier. The youngest boy, Drayton had yet to meet.
The hallway ended in the kitchen with peeling wallpaper of flowers and stripes and a small table with aluminum legs. Annie was already climbing the steep steps to the right, her footsteps clobbering each tread. At the top, a short hall went left and right, each ending at a door. Annie went left and turned the glass doorknob.
The ceiling inside was slanted. The books on the shelf were bloated. Annie asked Drayton about his luggage. He didn’t have any at the moment. She curled her bottom lip, stared, then decided it was an argument she didn’t have the energy for.
“Well, if you get any luggage, you can put it there.” She pointed at a bureau in the corner with a metal fan on top. “The washing machine is downstairs but the dryer don’t work. In this humidity, it’ll take a day and a half for them to hang dry. I don’t mean no disrespect, but if you start stinking to high heaven, you’ll have to sleep in the barn and that bed cost the same as this one.”
The day had gotten up to one-hundred degrees, but his shirt was still dry. Didn’t matter, a man can still smell underneath a dry shirt. The how and why his stink didn’t reach her nostrils didn’t seem to bother her. Wasn’t her problem, really.
“I serve supper at 6:00, but I’m running late. You’re welcome to make yourself at home up here or wander around the farm, pet the horses or whatever you plan on doing. Riding is off limits. I got an old mare stabled that you can take on the trail, but not until it cools off and not without one of us going with you. And you’ll have to sign a waiver. Understand?”
He nodded. Drayton listened to her descend the stairs. Pots and pans clanged below. She spoke quietly with Bo for some time.
Drayton had been in Middle East hot boxes that were only slightly warmer than that attic room. He stood at the window, contemplating Blake Barnes’s message. The day moved on. Annie knocked and told him supper was ready. He politely declined without opening the door, said he would like to rest. Then he watched the sun set. He listened to the house and the memories that penetrated the walls.
A television muttered from downstairs. Then music. Eventually, it was quiet. There was only the sound of tree frogs. Peace fell over the house. Those inside slept like the dead. Drayton stood at the window as still as the night.
When morning was near and the sky turned gray, he walked downstairs without a sound, found several boxes of tea in the cabinet. Among them Earl Grey.
Annie would rather starve than take a risk. She blamed her ex-husband for that.
Letting the kid in the house, a stranger, was the riskiest thing she’d done since Blake left. Starving was one thing, but letting a serial killer in the house was another. She lay in bed that first night staring at the ceiling wondering if she made a mistake. That floor hadn’t creaked once since she led him to the attic room and those boards whined even when you thought real hard. He must’ve gone right to sleep because it was dead silent.
Don’t say dead.
Annie wondered if she would sleep at all thinking about it. That money would only last a few weeks. Then what? That boy could be a lifetime of trouble. She rolled back and forth, thinking the risk just wasn’t worth it. She was about to get out of bed and sit at the foot of the steps, just in case he got any ideas. But sleep rolled over her like a rogue wave.
Annie didn’t own an alarm clock. She woke every morning at 4:00 AM, no matter what time she went to bed. She would lay there for half an hour and pray for her children, then get up to make breakfast. Annie hadn’t been late for the morning in twenty years.
She was late that morning.
The horses were whining. Annie blinked. The sun pierced the room through the blinds, rows of bright lines on her bedspread. The clock read eight-thirty. She sat up, checked her watch. Still eight-thirty.
She came storming out of her room pulling on a robe. The house was silent. Annie leaned over the kitchen sink, looked out the window. The horses stretched their necks over the fence, kicking the ground.
“Bo!” she shouted. “Time to feed!”
Annie melted butter in the pan. She’d let Young, her youngest, sleep until breakfast was ready. He was a late sleeper anyhow. Probably slept right through the shouting. She had dreams that night. Dreams. Something about a park and the water. There was a sailboat, too. She could still feel the breeze on her face.
The butter crackled in the pan. She broke open four eggs and noticed the tea pot. It was still warm. Bo walked in a hurry with stainless steel buckets across the backyard. Off to the right, under the largest oak on the property, Drayton sat at the iron table with his legs crossed, a teacup in one hand and a saucer in the other. He watched Bo dump buckets into the feedboxes and the horses stuff their heads inside. He sipped elegantly, lifting the cup to his lips with his little finger poised outward. She’d never seen anyone drink like that, except on television.
She hated to say it, but until she saw him out there, she’d forgotten about him. And Annie never forgot about anyone on her property. She always said she could smell people on the other side of her twenty acres and he slept upstairs while she slept like the dead.
Don’t say dead.
Bo woke up late on the second day, too.
He was thinking he never slept like that before, or dreamed like that, either. Drayton had been there two days and pretty much stayed in his room. Hadn’t come down to eat, piss or nothing. He just drank tea and that was it. It should’ve been creepy, but for some reason it wasn’t. Maybe all the sleep Bo was getting just put him in a good mood. Mama certainly was.
The kitchen was empty. Except for the tea kettle, the counters and stove hadn’t been used. Mama must’ve been sleeping in, also. That was a world record, her sleeping in again. Since it was Saturday, he didn’t bother waking her for work.
The horses didn’t seem too upset. None were tromping around the pasture. In fact, they were already grazing at the round bale. The little table under the oak was empty. Drayton must’ve been back in his room already. Bo figured that maybe Mama got up and fed. Good moods can do that. He went out to the feed room and heard the buckets clanging around.
“Morning.”
“It is,” Drayton said.
Bo pulled a Coke from the tiny fridge under the sink. He popped the drink and took a sip while Drayton went about cleaning the buckets. Shit, if he wanted to kick in around the farm, Bo wasn’t going to stop him. He went out to the barn to start hauling hay and dragging fields. The tractor spit black smoke from the straight pipe. He pulled the long trailer loaded with bales of hay out of the barn. When he turned back, Drayton was on the trailer.
They got chores down in half the time.
A black Hanoverian came to the fence. His lips flapped. His coat was radiant. His eyes fearless. Drayton had ridden many like this one through battlefields. He was a warmblood, his descendants trained for war. A magnificent beast.
Drayton stepped out of the mid-afternoon shade and offered his hand. The horse snorted and blew warm air from its nostrils.
“His name’s Blackjack.”
Drayton eyed the young boy in the wheelchair. Tracks led back to the house. “Beautiful horse.”
“I’m Young.”
Drayton shook his hand, nodding imperceptibly. He heard Annie talking to Young at night, heard the rubber treads squeak on the hardwood. He even sensed Young watching him through the downstairs window, the curtain drawn just enough. Now that he had a good look, he could see he was fifteen, bound to a wheelchair all his life.
“You don’t exist,” Young said.
“Pardon me?”
“I’ve been researching.” Young pulled a laptop from the saddlebag. “You don’t exist, not by Nassfau Rauttu.”
“I see.”
He tapped the keys. “You either lied or you’re hiding something. There’s no Nassfau Drayton Rauttu in the last hundred years.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“How so?”
“Are you a liar or have I met my match?”
“I don’t exist.”
Young waited for a follow up. When there was none, he pulled a broken radio antenna from the saddlebag and poked Drayton’s leg. “Physics don’t lie.”
A chuckle puffed from Drayton’s lips. A rarity.
Young watched him closely then told Drayton all the horses names and what their owners were like. He didn’t like half of them because they felt sorry for him. He didn’t usually talk to people. But then the sun tracked further across the sky until there was no more shade where they were standing. Young was back to the horses when Drayton asked him if he ever rode one. Young said his daddy used to put him on Imelda and walk him around the pasture. He got quiet after that.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure Drayton wasn’t looking. Young typed loudly. He looked over his shoulder once or twice more, as if comparing Drayton’s face to a picture then abruptly snapped the laptop shut.
“I accept.”
Drayton raised his eyebrows.
“You exist, therefore you can be found.”
Young wheeled over to the ramp that led to the back door. Challenge accepted.
A smile touched Drayton’s lips.
“You invite him to supper,” Mama told Bo after watching him help with the hay and drag the fields. Then they spent the next day mending fences. Except for a pot of tea on the stove every morning, they hadn’t seen him eat a thing. “Don’t take no for an answer,” she said.
But when Bo tapped on the bedroom door, Drayton spoke without opening it. “Pass along my regrets,” he said. “I’m a bit tired this evening and would like to retire.”
He didn’t look tired when they were working. Bo had soaked through two shirts finishing that fence and Drayton had yet to sweat. Not sure what kind of a person worked in heat like that and didn’t sweat. Must’ve been some sort of deformity.
Later that night, a boarder called. She forgot her camera in the round pen. She’d been filming that day and asked if Bo could bring it in so it didn’t get rained on. He broke away from the Braves game and found it hanging from the post. He admired the sleek design, the way the digital panel flipped out. He turned it on, switched it to night mode and panned around the pasture while he walked back to the house. He zoomed in on the kitchen window where Mama was cleaning up, then swooped toward the second floor.
Drayton was standing at the window.
Bo looked up from the camera. The window was empty. He had to be imagining things. Besides, the floor hadn’t creaked once since he retired. Bo didn’t want to make a big fuss out of it. As long as Drayton helped with chores and paid for his room, he could stare out that window until he passed out. He went back to the Braves game.
Forgot all about it.
On the seventh morning, Drayton watched the sun come up from beneath the live oak. He took careful sips, savoring the aroma, even if it was old and stale. Young would occasionally sneak peeks from the windows but he had yet to address him again. He wasn’t concerned about him discovering his true nature. Drayton’s past evaporated like dew in the afternoon.
He was enjoying his time on the farm; the scent of mowed grass, the horse feed and manure was refreshing. The hard work was satisfying and the family needed the extra pair of hands. But that wasn’t what he had come to do. He would like to stay much longer, but it was no place to be when the hunger returned.
Certainly not around the family.
Perhaps he would stay a bit longer if the opportunity presented itself. But that, also, he sensed would not happen. Yes, he would have to leave the farm soon. The hunger was beginning to gnaw. It was a hollow pain, a yearning that was ancient. It had nothing to do with appetite. It had more to do with his existence. The longer he denied it, the hollower he became. He did not fear the suffering that came with it, for Drayton learned to deal with that centuries ago. What Drayton feared was the instincts that took over. His desire to live, to exist, was innate. Over that, he had no control. And when the hunger was strong enough, he had no control at all. A gentleman, he was not.
Still, there was time.
Hal Towgard was a man of his word.
It was touching one-hundred degrees for the seventh fucking day in a row. He hated doing business when it was hot. Hell, half of Charleston hated doing anything when it was that hot. They might be in the South, but contrary to satirists, they weren’t stupid. He never once fucked his sister, nor did he know anyone who had (fucked their own sister, that is). They weren’t inbred, they didn’t own slaves, nor did they all fly a Confederate flag. Hell, if they thought the South was so stupid, how could anyone explain all the presidents of the United States coming from the South. (Forget Jimmy Carter, he was a dumbass.)
No, Hal hated doing business when it was hot enough to boil shrimp on a tin roof, but he had business to attend and business was his word. Cockroaches were a part of the Lowcountry. Sometimes you just learned to live with them, other times you had to grind them under foot. Snap, crackle, pop.
His pits were soaked before he got in the Chevy Silverado, squeezing behind the steering wheel. He tongued his mustache then wiped his bald head with a handkerchief and shifted ten ways to China trying to squeeze the hanky back in his pocket. Aaron stepped into the garage talking on his cell. The little dumbass didn’t close the door. Hal could feel the meter spin as cold air was sucked out of his house. He pushed a button, rolled the passenger window down.
“Close the fucking door.”
Aaron took his sweet ass time doing it, that cell attached to the side of his head. He damn near stopped on the last step. Hal punched the horn. It echoed inside the garage. He was about to go through the windshield. Hal Towgard, waiting on his son. When Aaron pulled open the passenger door, Hal tore the cell off his head and rifled it against the wall. It dented the sheetrock.
“Get in back.”
Aaron held an empty hand to his face. Rage boiled under his blank expression, flickering past his eyes. He pushed it down – all of it – and slid onto the back bench. Hal adjusted the rearview mirror and watched the boy. One sign of defiance and he’d dent the sheetrock with his head. Hal backed out of the garage and something crunched under his tire. Aaron slunk in the corner looking out the window. He kept it pushed down. Kid wasn’t stupid.
People didn’t understand that politics is politics. It was no different no matter where you were. Washington. New York. The country roads outside Charleston, South Cackalacky. It was all about control. People needed to be controlled. They craved control and, thankfully, there were people like Hal Towgard to give it to them. There were different ways to do it. The trick was finding what worked. Aaron dared a glance in his father’s direction, slunk lower in the seat and stared hollow out the window.
Fifteen minutes later, Hal turned down the last country road. One of his tenants needed a Come-to-Jesus talk. A cockroach problem was brewing and he liked to stay ahead of things. He turned onto the long winding road and eventually down a wooded driveway. Hal pulled next to Annie’s piece of shit. He didn’t honk. He didn’t need to. People knew when Hal Towgard arrived. They felt it in their bones. And if they didn’t...
Snap, crackle, pop.
A truck eased up to the house. Bo stopped measuring beet pulp in the feed room and looked out the window. He passed the steel bucket to Drayton without a word. A man climbed out of the brand new Chevy, his belly covering his belt buckle.
The front door rattled and Annie was down the steps.
“I come to check on y’all.” Hal wiped his head with a handkerchief. “Aaron said he got in trouble over here and I wanted to make sure no one was hurt.”
“No trouble,” Annie said.
“You got company?” Hal looked past Bo.
Drayton stood in the doorway, looking at the devil Blake Barnes left behind. Tell them I’m sorry. For leaving? Or to fend for themselves?
“Not your business, Hal. Kindly get your truck off my property.”
“Annie.”
Hal worked his lips as if chewing on which words to spit. He hiked up his belt, shifted his weight like he had to fart. He plucked a strand of foxtail from the ground and minced it between his front teeth. He took a deep breath, looked into the trees as if to tell God to turn down the thermostat. He twisted the foxtail between his fingers. Bo stepped back and Hal kept walking, would’ve knocked right into him had he not.
“My boy came home with a load of shit in his pants.” Hal looked down on Annie, the foxtail dangling toward her nose. “That is my business.”
“He-he started it,” Bo said. “Aaron wanted to fight.”
“Well did you?”
“He wouldn’t listen.”
“You saying my boy shit his pants for fun? Is that what this is all about?” He looked around and made sure to make eye contact with each one of them. “Let me tell you something, I can take this property from you in the morning if I want. Now when my boy comes home like that and you tell me it was because he was fighting, well that ain’t the answer I’m looking for. I want to know who is here.” Another round of hard looking and he ripped the stalk from his teeth. “Answer me!”
“That’s enough!” Annie shouted. “Your boy makes plenty of trouble and if he got a little back.”
“Your mama fight your fights, boy?”
Annie shoved but his massive frame didn’t budge. “Don’t start making threats, Hal.”
He stared a while longer. The silence was even worse. He appeared to weigh his options and there were plenty of them. No option was off the table and they knew it. He finally pointed at the feed room.
“Come.”
Drayton did not respond. He observed the moment, then casually pushed off the doorframe and started across the grass. He walked like a person with all the time in the world. A person that had no beginning. That had no end. Just walking. Bahiagrass stalks whipped his legs. Hal’s tongue ran back and forth along his mustache. When he could wait no more, he took the last two steps. Drayton stopped before they collided.
“You from around here, boy?”
Drayton kept his eyes cast down. The racist tone was as clear as a written word. Hal moved closer, his voice rattled deeply.
“Here in the South we have manners. When an adult speaks, you answer ‘yes, sir’. So let’s try this again.” He enunciated very slowly. “You from around here?”
There was no bitterness or edge in Drayton’s voice. He simply said, “No.”
“I’m sorry? You want to try that again?”
Drayton didn’t respond. He didn’t shake his head or provide an answer. Emotions ran thick through Hal, pusling in waves that Drayton could taste.
“My boy tells me you were interfering with business. Now boys will be boys, that is a fact. But you got no business in my business, you understand? I forgive once. There is no seconds here, boy. I am a gentleman after all. If I have to come out here again, everything gets hurt. Do you understand?”
Hal backed up a step, hard eyes bearing down. He looked around and considered whether a second chance was in his best interest.
“Lift your eyes, boy, and answer me.”
Drayton focused on the third roll of Hal’s neck, the red bumps where he shaved. Hal’s heart pulsed beneath the collared shirt sticking to his chest. Drayton closed his eyes, took a deep breath and breathed in the man’s essence, tasted the pain that hid deep inside. His forgotten memories were heavy and toxic. His anger an iron maiden.
Hal’s father beat him. He felt his father’s rings often. He learned to patch himself up and he learned not to cry. His father was raising a man, not a pussy. He watched him beat his mother, too. He stomped her in the kitchen. Called her a whore. An ambulance took her away while he sat in the living room with a scotch and water.
No pussies here.
Hal’s anger hid his sadness, a layer that would take centuries to melt. Drayton did not judge this man. After all, it took Drayton that long to resolve his own madness and rage. Drayton opened his eyes, lifted his gaze to Hal’s. With a thought, he removed the ice, exposed Hal’s pain and fear all at once. Showed him the depth of his neglect. Revealed the insatiable sadness he had pushed into a dark, deep corner. The things he did not remember. The things he did not feel.
The things he cared not to see.
Hal’s tongue stopped working. The color on his cheeks drained beneath a sheet of sweat. Hal took a step back, clutched his chest.
Aaron jumped out of the truck.
Hal concentrated on breathing, yanked his arm away from his son. Aaron retreated slowly, unsure if his father would fall over in the next second. Hal wiped his whole head and all his chins. His mouth worked rapidly, but words could not make their way out, only the gummy sound of his tongue. He felt his way along the hood. His pasty, colorless complexion was evident through the tinted window. He backed the truck up, nice and easy. He didn’t spin the wheels and throw rocks. They watched him roll out of sight in disbelief.
Hal Towgard had never left without the last word.
Hal stopped at the end of the drive, stared at the reflective blue marker pinned to the water oak. The truck idled. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands. He just needed to catch his breath, but no matter how hard he tried, the next breath came a little faster, a littler shallower.
The boy’s eyes... they were...
Once, when Hal was seven, he went to open the pasture. One of the wires was hot, but they weren’t all hot. He’d seen his father grabbed them all the time. But when Hal touched that wire, a jolt rattled through him, shook fingers, toes and nuts all at the same time. He tried to let go but the wire had him. It grabbed back, sucked his fingers around it tight.
The boy’s eyes were like that.
Sickness rolled in his stomach. It reached up and clenched his heart. He tried to look away, but couldn’t. He felt colder and ugly.
Rotten.
Drayton cleaned the last steel bucket and placed it in line with the others. He dried his hands and hung the towel. Everything was in place. The sun was down and the sky dimming. Drayton stepped outside the feed room. The horses were at the fence, watching him. Each of them nuzzled his outstretched hand as he passed, bowed their heads.
Drayton watched darkness settle while dishes clattered inside the house. The light cast out from the kitchen. Annie was busy at the sink. They’d asked him to join them for dinner, but Drayton politely declined. He needed to move on. Food did nothing to quell the hunger and it had been several months since he fed. There was plenty of dying in the city.
Bo was coming from the house. Drayton sensed the cool silkiness of his essence flowing as he neared. He kept himself centered to avoid absorbing it. But it tasted so good. The horses felt the flare of his instincts, reared up and fled. Drayton gripped the fence.
“What’s with them?” Bo rested the heel of his boot on the lowest rail.
“A little spooked.”
“Yeah, well, supper’s still waiting. Mama told me not to ask this time. She wants to apologize for Mr. Towgard’s or something.”
“No need. Your hospitality is much appreciated, but I must excuse myself, once again.”
“She ain’t going to like that much. She’ll come out here and feed you like a baby if you keep resisting.”
The horses had settled down in the far corner, keeping a wary eye out for predators. Drayton smiled. “You’ll make a fine gentleman, Bo.”
Bo’s laughter so punctual it gave the horses a start. “Gentleman? If you’re inviting me for tea, ain’t going to happen.”
He smacked Drayton on the shoulder, started back for the house.
“I’ll tell Mama you ain’t coming,” he called. “You best hide.”
Young’s room was dark except for the glow of his computer. He was tapping the keys, muttering to himself. Sometimes arguing with himself. He ran his finger down a list of names, mumbling in supersonic speed. He unfolded a lined sheet of paper and jotted some down. The lead broke. He wheeled around.
Drayton was on his bed.
“Fuck!” He grabbed his chest. “You going to give me a heart attack. How’d you get in here?”
“You were busy.”
“Yeah, well you win. I can’t find you anywhere. You’re a man of mystery. I don’t have a prize for you, if that’s what you came for.”
Young went through all the searches he’d done, and they included CIA agents, past and present, and witness protection candidates. He had his doubts how thorough or accurate those databases were but they came up blank anyway.
“I did find a Nassfaurauttu. It was one name, though. He was a Civil War veteran. But unless you’re a hundred and fifty, I think that’s a miss. You don’t look a day over a hundred.”
Great party, the Civil War.
Drayton was looking at the shelf above his bed. Mostly books, a few trophies from Spelling Bees and Academic competitions, a Lego Challenge and one picture. His mother framed it. They were at the beach. Bo had built a huge castle for a sand sculpting contest. He got third in his category. In the picture, Bo was lying in the hole in front of the castle. Young was only a few years old. He sat on it like a throne. His mother was on his left.
Drayton took the picture down and touched the white space that had been cut out. He traced the outline of a man now reduced to an empty space.
“What was he like?” Drayton said.
“How should I know?” He took the picture from Drayton. “He left.”
He wiped the dust. Drayton felt his pulse. Energy bent the space around him. Young stared at the photo and absently thumped his hand against the armrest of his chair in time to his heartbeat. He moved to thumping his thigh, beat it with the same steady rhythm.
He left.
Drayton squatted next to him. Young stared ahead, resolute. Drayton could feel the blue vein just under his skin as if it were on the tip of his tongue. He placed his hand over Young’s forehead, let him look deep into his eyes. Drayton took Blake Barnes’s life. He held his memories. Young saw the extent of his father’s life, the haunting thoughts, the divided personality. The insanity that ate him up.
Blake Barnes did not abandon his family, he abandoned life. He did not leave because his son was broken, he ran because he was frightened. He ran because he lacked courage. Because he was lost.
Not because of Young.
In those few moments, Young absorbed his father’s life and understood. He finally knew what his mother had been telling him all his life. More than that, the last few words of his father’s life absolved much of the pain and heartache Young carried like a string of rocks. Drayton delivered the message.
I’m sorry.
Young was still holding the picture. Drayton wasn’t there. He was down the long, winding driveway. Young was slumped in his chair when he left. Annie came into his room and held him. Drayton heard the wailing. Felt the tenderness of his mother’s touch. Heard her tell him for the thousandth time. This time, Young heard it.
It’s not your fault.
Drayton stood in the pasture late that night.
Annie was in the kitchen. Young was asleep. Bo was watching a Braves game. They thought Drayton was upstairs doing his silent thing. They would come up the next morning to find the door ajar and the bed sheets without wrinkles. They would also find enough money to pay next month’s rent.
When Annie next checked her bank account, she would discover she would have enough to cover more than next month. It only took a few keystrokes on Young’s laptop for Drayton to transfer a sum that would take care of them the rest of their lives.
Annie needed something more than money. She wanted things to be right. Blake Barnes broke her heart, but she’d moved on from that. Her pain and regret were the kids she let get in his way. That would be resolved. And in two years, she would leave in peace.
Drayton would come back for that.
Hal skipped dinner.
He sat on the edge of his bed. The shower ran in the bathroom. Steam flooded from the open door. There was a knock on the bedroom door.
“Are you all right?” his wife called.
Hal was not fine. A sickness had settled in his stomach. Something spread throughout his mid-section. The stench of his insides permeated his senses. He had hovered over the toilet with his finger in his throat, but he couldn’t make go away. He’d had viruses that kept him puking through the night, but never had he felt sickness this deep. A sadness that was bottomless, treacherous.
He was a pussy.
He retrieved the Pepto-Bismol from the bathroom, fumbled with the lid. He lifted the bottle to his lips, ignored the crusty flakes that slogged down his throat. But it didn’t coat the sickness. Didn’t dispel the sadness. He lifted the bottle again then suddenly dropped it. The pink liquid glugged over the floral bedspread. Hal clutched his chest. He tried to breathe. He hit the corner of the bed and rolled onto the floor. The world washed past his senses, dark and blurry.
“Hal? Are you all right?” The door knob rattled.
The boy stood at his feet. His skin was as black as the sky outside the window, drawn tightly over his cheeks. He slid his cold fingers over Hal’s sternum, making little circles. Hal moved his lips. He knew he invited this monster into his house many years ago, the day he took over all of Blake Barnes’s debt. The day he began taking money from his family.
He deserved this.
Hal felt something draining from his chest. It was smooth, like a vaporous stream of wintry air. The boy closed his eyes and tipped his head back. His skin loosened. And as it did, the pressure released Hal. The room started to dim. The last thing he saw was Death’s face looking down on him. Suddenly, he felt the urge to confess his sorrow for the things he’d done. There were so many of them, but he didn’t have the strength. He just wanted to cry.
Big sleep fell on Hal. As he parted, he heard the boy’s final words and took them into the darkness. He left his body as the boy spoke.
Thank you.
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WHAT TO READ NEXT?
Get more short stories in The Drayton Chronicles.
And the first full-length novel, The Roots of Drayton.