by R. K. Latch
“I just want to say…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” he managed before a yawn slipped out. He was thankful for the yawn, as it helped keep his voice steady.
To her credit, she didn’t ask, ‘for what’. She knew well what he meant, and, in a style, he had begun expecting from her, she smiled that sweet smile that lit her face up and she placed a warm, smooth palm against his cheek. “It’s our pleasure.”
With that, she let go and walked on down the hall. Wade let himself in the room and changed quickly into a set of pajamas that were just a little too big for him. They were sleek and smooth and cool against his skin. He liked them a lot. He probably should take a bath, but he was just too tired. Perhaps in the morning, it would seem a better idea.
Chapter 7
Before
Wade awoke from a light sleep. He was sleeping in the floor of the living room. He headed to the single bedroom of the old, drafty shack he shared with his mother on the rare night she had no company overnight. It was a bleak December night, just after Christmas. A cheerless Christmas that Wade hoped would just end and never return. The house was cold, the little wood heater overworking itself and fighting an eventual losing battle. The railroad tracks behind the clapboard house were close and when the train rolled by the walls and floors shook violently. Wade pulled a dingy sheet over his shoulders and pretended he was a ghost with the sheet billowing out behind him.
A slender slice of weak, yellow light spilled into the black hallway from the bathroom. It was quiet within. When Wade strained to listen, he could only hear the drops of water plopping into yet more water. Six-year-old Wade stopped and leaned close to the opening.
“Ma,” he called. There was no reply. “Momma,” he called again. “I’m cold.” He was hungry too but didn’t see any reason in telling her that. It would do no good. They never had food in the icebox or the cabinets.
Just before Wade had dozed off, his mother had been sitting on the couch and he’d laid down across the room from her so he could see her. She had been upset. She usually was but tonight she was worse than he had possibly ever seen her.
It was all over Trevor. Trevor did not deserve the grief his mother suffered because of him. His ma seemed not to enjoy being with just him. No, she always wanted a man around and while Wade could not understand it, he knew it to be true. She was happier with a man in the house, even when he treated her dastardly as Trevor had, than without one. It was the craziest thing. The men that his ma attracted were all bad, but Trevor had to be the absolute worst. Hands down, if you asked Wade.
Trevor, Wade didn’t even know his last name and didn’t care to learn it, was mean and nasty and, even in Wade’s unenlightened opinion, stupid. He seemed not to be able to do the simplest tasks without mucking them up. But Wade did not laugh at him. No, not anymore. He’d learned his lesson the hard way and his wrist still ached on cold, wet nights like this.
Something had happened today. Something bad, in his mother’s opinion, at any rate. Trevor had packed up an ugly green bag with all his clothes and he’d left, vowing never to come back. That was just fine with Wade. He hoped he never laid eyes upon the bastard again.
As soon as he started tossing his things into the bag, Wade’s mom went crazy. She started pleading and begging, grabbing at Trevor’s legs. The hollering of both of them was awful and Wade was afraid the neighbors would get the police over. That hadn’t happened, even though the hollering and fussing and fighting got worse and worse.
When ma blocked the door, pleading that she would do anything, anything in the world if he would just stay, they could fix it—whatever it was, Wade didn’t and never did know—she would be the kind of woman he wanted. She would lose weight, fix her hair just like he wanted—not that there was anything wrong with it in Wade’s eyes. She would work more, pick up a few shifts at Parker’s Diner and give him the money—why she would even say such a thing Wade could not comprehend. It was all for naught. Trevor grabbed her around the neck with his big, beefy hand and pulled her to her feet, as she’d been kneeling, begging pathetically between him and the door. He could have just pushed her out of the way and walked out the door but that was Trevor for you. He would always do the worst. Give him three choices and he would always pick the most despicable of them.
Wade was a rail-thin stick of a boy and weighed less than one of Trevor’s legs. He’d already tasted the biting edge of Trevor’s disapproval. Black eyes, busted lips, even broken bones were nothing new to young Wade. He had no more a tolerance for pain than anyone else, but when he saw his mother’s, the woman that brought him into this world, face turning blue, her eyes bulging even as Trevor not only tightened his grip but reinforced it with his other hand, he saw red.
Trevor was not a particularly big man, but compared to Wade and his slight mother, he was a behemoth. Tall, almost six feet, thin but solid, with short, thinning hair that he put way too much pomade in, to them he was no less than a Superman. He pulled Wade’s mother up off her feet, almost eye level to him and then, in a shocking movement that shook Wade’s whole world, slammed her down to the plain plank flooring.
“No!” Wade shouted and launched his attack. For all the good it did, he’d be better off attacking a wall. Wade launched into the air, like some comic book superhero, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and all that jazz. He landed on Trevor’s hip and started banging away with his fists. He’d never hit anyone or anything so hard.
Wade’s arms were nothing but sticks, and thin ones at that. Yet, he pelted the much bigger man with everything he had. He grunted and gnashed with every single strike.
Trevor did not wail in pain or offer a peaceful surrender. No. He laughed at Wade. Mocked him. “You little fuck stain. You’re half the damn reason I’m hitting the road. You little sissy. You and this whore deserve each other.”
“Leave my ma alone. She ain’t no whore!” He was making a mistake, a huge one, Wade knew, but he was blinded with anger and a rage he could not control gripped his mind.
An elbow crashed into the bridge of his nose. His vision already blurred by tears, was completely taken as a fresh flood of tears and blood filled his view. All he could see beyond that mess was a field of bright white pain stars. He fell away to the ground, hands going to his nose. Warm, sticky blood flowed freely.
His mother did not come to him. No, she wailed as Trevor left through the door. She wailed like something wounded as the engine started up and mewled as the sound of the engine receded.
Wade lay there as his mother stepped over him and collapsed on the sofa.
After a great while, when Wade’s bleeding finally stopped, he heard her say, not to him, but to either herself or to the thin air, “I can’t live without him. I can’t. I just can’t.” She said it over and over like some crazy person. He spoke to her, asked for help. She wouldn’t even look at him. So, he lay there, finally falling silent, hurting. Finally, Wade reached for a wadded sheet that had fallen from the sofa and wrapped up in it.
Upon waking, he needed his mother. He needed her desperately. He needed her to hold him, and he would tell her it would be okay. He would be the man of the house. They didn’t need Trevor. Ma had never been the affectionate sort, at least toward him. To the string of men that endlessly sauntered in and then back out again, well, that was quite a horse of a different color. But maybe it could change, maybe it could be different now. He’d seen her on the edge before, dangling on the precipice of insanity from grief, anger, and loneliness. But tonight, with Trevor, it had been all too close to call.
Maybe Wade could make it better. He would surely try to do just that.
“Ma, you okay?” he called again weakly at the door before rapping his tiny knuckles on the dirty, white door.
Still, there was no answer.
Wade waited a moment longer. He listened as the dripping continued, those large plops coming at an unsteady rhythm. She must be truly angry. Usually, she would yell at him if she wanted t
o be left alone.
The door creaked lightly as he pushed it open. The bulbs over the sink were lighted. Still, most of the room lay in a soft grey, more a murk than a black. He saw his mother in the bathtub, one arm hanging over the rim of the claw-foot tub situated in the middle of the small room.
He saw dark blood dripping from her arm, from her wrist. The drops fell almost in time with the water from the bathtub faucet, into a growing pool of crimson.
Wade rushed to his mother. The sheet around his shoulders fell as he moved. She was there, laying in the bath, her face looking toward the wall. As his feet padded across the cold floor she did not move.
He was almost there when he ran right through the puddle of his mother’s blood. His feet lost all traction and in an instant, he was in the air, his feet and legs, above his head. He crashed down hard on the floor. Crackles of pain branched out all through his body. The wind was knocked out of him and his shoulders, which had taken most of the impact, went numb, killing the pain but also limiting his mobility. Wade looked up to his mother’s arm. It was turned palm down to the floor and the drips of blood were still coming.
“Ma, Ma, mom,” he called. He reached for her hand and found it cold to the touch. He pulled himself up and got his first good look at her. He’d tried not to when entering the bathroom, as it was not good to see your mother naked, but now he didn’t think about that at all.
He knew as his eyes raked over the ashen face of his mother that she was not okay and never would be again.
Nadine’s eyes were open, but they saw nothing. Her once clear green eyes had lost their luster, their shine. Her mouth hung agape but would never mutter another word. Her skin, never a golden brown, but more a pasty white, was now stark against the pink water of the tub, still deepening a darker red from her other slit wrist.
Wade opened his own mouth, but no words tumbled out. The world was spinning, and he did not like it. His legs no longer contained the strength to hold him, and he listed. Catching the side of the tub with one hand, he managed to not fall back into the blood of his mother. Later, he would find that his fall had mopped up a significant amount of the lost liquid. The back of his shirt and the butt of his cotton trousers were covered with the scarlet stuff but that did not matter now, if it ever would.
She was naked, but that had no significance. He saw nothing but her face. She wore the saddest expression he’d ever seen and while she would not speak for the rest of eternity, but now he could hear her words clearer than anything he’d ever heard: “I can’t live without him.”
But why, oh why, hadn’t she meant him, the one person in the world that loved her beyond all others, beyond all things.
Wade stepped back slowly; his sorrow started to turn hot. He had never known his father and only knew his mother because she had saw the advantage of a child, whether it be for assistance or sympathy, after all they would not even be in this house if the old landlord had not felt sorry for the unwed mother and her dirty-faced child. Wade knew this because they had gone to extra length to make themselves look pitiful and pitiable.
Had this woman ever loved him? Had she ever truly, honestly cared?
The answer was right before him, sitting in the fast-cooling water, two large cuts, one across each of her dainty wrists. Even at six he knew, if she had loved him, even a little, she would not have taken her own life as he, her son, her only child, slept, hungry and hurt and without a soul to turn to, laying in the floor of a two-room shack on the edge of nowhere. Covered in a filthy sheet, in pain from defending her, or doing his best to do so. He knew that, just as he knew other things no child should ever be forced to contemplate.
Wade’s mind was feverish. He was not ready to lay down and cut at his own body the way she did. No. But he could not stay here, either. He’d heard her say what happened to children without parents. The state or the government or even the church would be round to take him in and that would be worse than the squalor he now lived in, or so she’d often said.
Her calmed his nerves as well as he could, his hands still trembling facing the fact he was alone in the big wide world and the only person he had ever considered family had snatched that away from him so easily, so greedily.
He cried the last tears he would ever shed. It took hours, but the well finally ran dry.
Wade could not move and stood there, looking at his mother as the sorrow continued to smolder until a fire of something else flamed high in his soul.
It was rage, a fury that was bigger than him, he would soon discover. And he fed it by sanding there the whole night through, staring at the mother that escaped this hell of a life and left him, like a fool, behind.
Before Wade turned to leave, the first rays of morning light bled through the grime covered window.
Chapter 8
For the second night in a row, he laid down in a comfortable bed with warms covers and soft pillows. While he did not remember that first night, the second he was much more to himself. Many nights, nights of sleeplessness and disturbed, fragile sleep, he’d dreamt of crawling into a thing such as he found himself now. Too many backseats, benches, floors, even livestock stalls had served as poor substitutes over the years. He’d slept in beds, sure, but none in which he could rest easy and allow his mind to ease to the point of real relaxation.
He was not afraid of the dark. Living a life such as his, the things in the dark were much scarier than the dark itself. Still, he’d left the bedroom door open a crack. Not for the light, as a window let in enough to discern subtleties in the dimness of the room. No, he left it ajar, hoping to hear the sounds of the Duncan’s going about their nightly routines before retiring. For some reason that low, subtle murmur of voices and activity made him feel good, cozy as he surrounded himself with the bed linen that smelled so strongly of a fresh summer day.
He’d fallen asleep with a smile on his face scant hours ago.
Wade’s dream did not wake him. He no longer considered it a nightmare having lived with the memory and dream ever since. No, it was something else entirely.
Footsteps. He heard them immediately. No one, not even a child of nine, could live years grasping to the line of survival and switch it off in mere days. He came awake and his eyelids parted after three steps. He hadn’t heard the door as it had not creaked but glided easily on lubricated hinges.
The overhead light flared to life and the brightness stabbed at his eyes.
“Wade,” Mr. Duncan said, standing above him. “Put this on and meet me in the kitchen.” Luthor Duncan was dressed differently than he’d ever seen him. He had on no pajamas, no business suit, or even a casual button up with trousers. No. He had on dark denim coveralls, the kind a painter or even a mechanic might wear. Wade looked down at what the man tossed him. It was red pajamas, one-piece with feet in them so you wouldn’t walk barefoot. The garment was sometimes called a union suit, but Wade had no way of knowing that. The pj’s were heavy and scratchy but Mr. Duncan did not wait to hear Wade’s concerns over the attire. He said his piece and turned and left the room, leaving Wade shaking the sleep from his mind.
In the bed, holding the pajamas, Wade wondered what in the world was going on. How could he have been so wrong about Mr. and Mrs. Duncan. He knew better than to let his guard down. The walls Wade had constructed were tall and thick and there was only one gate. He opened that gate, and this is where he found himself: holding a strange pair of bedclothes after being told to get out of bed in what he thought must have been the middle of the night.
He had no one to blame but himself. Who knew what odd, strange event the two had planned for him?
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Maybe it was some sort of family tradition they wanted to include him in. Maybe there would be something good to eat in the kitchen. No, that didn’t feel right. Wade, without realizing it, had become an astute student of human behavior. He’d learned to spot easy marks in the crowd. Alternatively, he’d also learned to decide which folks to leave alone. They had a lit
tle extra steel in them. An unbending nature that resisted no matter what. Tonight, as he stood over him even as Wade was shaking off the last of the dram, he’d seen it in Mr. Duncan.
The only thing that kept him from throwing open a window and escaping out into the night, once again on the run was, well, more than anything it was curiosity. Was he overreacting? Certainly, it was possible. Wade did not think that the case, but he’d been wrong before. Looks like he’d been wrong about the Duncan’s, but maybe, just maybe he was wrong about being wrong.
As Nolte, the young hitchhiker that had once shared a meal with Wade, right before robbing him of the two dollars he held deep in his pocket, always said. “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. There was only one way to find out.
Wade stood and quickly stripped. Before anyone could intrude, he figured out how the scratchy old red pj’s went on and pulled them on. He fastened the opening at his rear. They were a close fit, most likely purchased today on Mr. Duncan’s shopping trip.
Unsure of anything, he padded softly to the bedroom door and walked out.
+++
Gabby could not help herself. Excitement throbbed through her like ecstasy. Her mouth was watering and the feel of her nipples against the taut fabric of her overshirt was intoxicating.
She was no longer a young woman. The lines on her face were deeper now than they’d ever been, and her hair had lost some of its luster. She now had curves where before, there had only been angles. Her back ached after long days in the kitchen and she sometimes felt her youth drain away as if water through a sieve.
Still, there were things that made her feel young again. As she waited for Luthor in the living room, unable to sit, the excitement just too much, she thought of life before the two of them.