“We’re gonna swing by the house so you can say hi to Mama before Big Dick gets home.”
I snickered at Lucas’s name for his Dad. “Things been better? With him?”
Lucas shrugged. “Shit.” He pronounced it shee-it.
Aunt Donna was, as usual, tired and looked overwhelmed, when we came in the house. But she paused long enough to kiss me on the cheek. “Good to see you, Cole. Your Mama doin’ okay? Yeah? Y’all skedaddle, I’m tryin’ to get this floor clean. Dinner’s at six.”
Big Bill ignored me when he got home, which I far preferred to him paying attention to me. By eight, he was asleep in his chair, a beer perched precariously on his stomach. Lucas tiptoed over to his dad, apparently in an effort to extract the beer and place it on the side table. But when he touched the can, Big Bill stirred and put his hand on the beer.
Lucas stepped back. “Mama, we’re headed out.”
“Where you going this time of night?” she asked.
“Party over at Brian Wilkes’ place. Don’t worry, his mom don’t tolerate no pot or nothing.”
Donna looked doubtful. But she nodded. “Y’all go on. Behave yourselves.”
We were halfway out the door when Big Bill stirred, letting out a grumble. Then we heard a loud curse. “Son of a BITCH!”
My eyes swept back to Big Bill, who was sitting up, eyes wide now, beer running down the bottom of his shirt and pants. His face contorted with rage, eyebrows coming together, lips scrunching together in a mean look, like an old man with no teeth. His eyes fixed on Donna.
She started backing toward the kitchen. “Let me get you a towel,” she mumbled.
“Bitch!” he cursed. “Why the hell you let that happen?”
“Bill, we tried to get the can from ya. Lucas here tried to get it and put it on the side table. But you wouldn’t let go.”
He stalked toward her. “Are you talking back to me?”
Dread was sweeping over her face. “Bill, you leave me alone.”
Lucas, standing next to me, let out a curse. “Fucking asshole, leave her alone. It was your damn beer.”
Big Bill froze in place, his back suddenly tense. Then he turned toward Lucas. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Donna grabbed at him. “Bill! Leave him alone—”
Her words were cut off in a gurgling scream when he elbowed her in the nose. She fell back onto her ass in the kitchen, blood spurting from between the hands she held to her face.
“Asshole!” Lucas shouted. Then he charged at his father.
Big Bill might have been a drunk and flabby, with a giant belly, but he was strong, with the strength of a boa constrictor. He swung at Lucas, connecting with Lucas’s cheek with a loud crack! Then he swung again with his left hand, connecting with Lucas’s other cheek.
“I’ll fucking kill you, boy,” Big Bill threatened, his voice low and full of rage. He shoved the dazed Lucas up against the wall.
I looked around in a panic, urgently, as Bill’s hands closed on his son’s throat.
Baseball bat. There was an aluminum bat in the hall, leaning against the corner next to Lucas’s door. I ran for it and hefted the bat then walked back into the living room. Bill was holding his son against the wall, Lucas’s face turning bright red at the neck where his father gripped him.
Donna grabbed at his arm, screaming, “Leave him alone!”
In five quick steps, I approached, bringing the bat behind me like I was ready for a grand slam. Then I yelled, “Big Bill!”
Bill turned his head toward me, rage on his face.
I swung.
The bat connected at Bill’s temple with a loud pop, bouncing his head back like a bowling pin. Big Bill collapsed to the floor.
“Oh my Lord, you killed him!” Donna screamed, dropping to her knees next to Big Bill. “You killed him!” She leaned over her husband, crying, apparently losing any interest or concern for Lucas, who was now standing off to the side gasping and sputtering as he tried to regain his breath. “You killed him!” she accused again.
Lucas, recovering, muttered, “He ain’t dead. He’s too damned mean to die.”
He wasn’t dead, but he did end up spending a week in the hospital. And for the rest of that summer, the bastard kept his distance from me, and I kept myself armed with a six-inch knife at all times.
I hated the Deep South, and I’d been perfectly happy living in Metro DC. But the loss of my job had brought me back down here, not far at all from those mountains in North Georgia. I never wanted to come back, I never wanted to do a lot of things. But here I was. I had to make the best of it, and do the best I could for Erin and the kids.
The kids.
I closed my eyes and unusually, said a quick prayer. Unusual because I never prayed. But for Brenna, I could do it.
Where was she? Every day for two years I had asked that question. I’d never realized what it meant to be a parent who had lost a child. Missing. Not knowing if she was dead or suffering or … what? It changed everything. I had a gaping wound that never scabbed over, never healed, never stopped hurting. It was made that much worse by the fact that for most of the first year she was gone, I was unable to do anything, locked away in a cell.
I ached to go now, to leave everything, to walk away from our jobs and school, take Sam and drive to Portland. Never stop until we found her.
Instead, I strained the spaghetti and put it on the plates, put them on the table, and called out. “Sam? Dinner!”
Sam’s door opened, and he came shuffling down the hallway. I had my back to him, pouring glasses of lemonade as I asked him, “How was school today?”
When I turned around, I saw his face and froze. His nose was swollen and red, and he had a nasty bruise forming underneath his left eye. I set the drinks on the table and approached him. “Christ, what happened to you?”
Sam seemed to shrink into himself as he slipped into one of the chairs. “I got in a fight.”
The words that came out of my mouth were worthy of my father. “Well, I sure hope the other guy looked worse.”
Sam’s face went through a progression of expressions, ending on a hurt look.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Sam. That’s something my father would have said to me. I didn’t mean it.” I sat down in my seat. “Are you okay? Who was it?”
My words seemed to sink in, but he didn’t answer right away. I waited, watching. Finally he said, “Nobody. It doesn’t matter.”
Both of us started to eat, but I pressed the issue. “It does matter, Sam. Are you being bullied? Tell me what’s going on.”
Sam didn’t respond. He just sat there eating and ignoring me.
“Come on, Sam. Talk to me. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.” His tone had a sense of finality to it.
How was I supposed to respond to that? I didn’t at first. I ate and studied my sons face. He was so small for a sixteen-year-old, it was a little unnerving. It begged the question, what kind of an asshole beat up a kid half his size? Because I seriously doubted there was anyone Sam’s size at his school.
I decided to try again. “Listen, I know I haven’t exactly been the most available lately.”
At the word lately, Sam’s mouth curled up in a look of contempt. I paused for a second, knowing that lately was probably the understatement of the decade. “Look … I screwed up bad after Brenna disappeared, and I work so much lately we hardly ever do anything together. I’m sorry about that, Sam. But give me a chance. Tell me what happened.”
Sullen. “Leave me alone.”
Crap. I took another bite of my food then chewed, not knowing what to say. Or if there was anything I could say. I swallowed, and I thought. Like I often did lately, I felt like a failure. Sam’s reaction reminded me so much of Brenna in the weeks and months leading up to her disappearance, it made my heart ache. Hollow, empty. I sighed. I wasn’t going to be able to force Sam to communicate. I would just have to be patient
and keep trying.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. Finally, he said, “May I be excused?”
“Yeah,” I said vaguely waving. “I’ve got to go back to work in about forty-five minutes. Want to play a round of chess first?”
“Nah, I’m tired. Thanks, though.”
Sam left his plate at the table and walked away. Normally I might have prodded him to scrape it off and put it in the sink, but now wasn’t really the time for that, was it?
Instead, I stood up and washed the dishes, sprayed down the counters and wiped them, and then checked my watch. I didn’t have to leave for twenty minutes, but that was an awkward amount of time. I sat down on the couch and picked up the book I had been starting and stopping for the past two weeks. I read two pages but stopped when I realized that I hadn’t comprehended a word.
My eyes drifted to the shelf under the coffee table. I hadn’t realized that Erin had put our photo albums there. I slid the top book off the stack and lifted it up, laying it on top of the coffee table. It was brown faux leather with fake gold etching, and the words, Family Memories, stamped in the center. I opened the album.
It was like being punched. The first photograph was an eight by ten of Brenna and Sam running side by side on the sidewalk in front of our old house. Not the huge house … no, our first home. The one we loved. Our old house. Brenna was dressed all in black, with long flowing sleeves, and a peaked witch’s hat. Her face was painted green, and in the midst of the makeup her smile gleamed, except for the one missing front tooth. In the picture, she was seven years old. Her left hand was gripped around Sam’s right as he ran beside her. Sam had dressed as a ladybug, an occasion which had provoked an argument between me and Erin. In retrospect, I felt like an asshole. I’d argued that he should have a boy costume.
Why couldn’t I just let the kid be a kid? In the photo, Sam had a fiendishly large smile for a ladybug, and both of them looked thrilled as they carried their plastic jack-o’-lanterns on their way to collect candy.
I didn’t realize I was crying. But somehow, while I sat there staring at the picture as it blurred, Sam walked in the room and said, “Dad? Are you okay?”
I looked up, and my vision blurred, and for a second Sam looked like Brenna, then he looked like the little boy he had once been, and I choked a little as I said, “Yeah.” But it was obvious that wasn’t true, because more tears were running down my face.
I couldn’t remember ever having cried in my adult life except the night after they found Brenna’s smashed cell phone. “Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … I miss her too.”
Sam swallowed and looked anxious, like he just didn’t know what to say. I didn’t either. There was nothing in the parental manual my dad passed down that gave any precedent or instruction for this. Finally I said, “I’ve got to head into work. I’ll be about an hour, you want to come with? I can get you some hash browns or something if you want.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m really tired, I want to head to bed. I just came out to say … I’m sorry for being rude at dinner.”
I wiped my face with my left hand and stood, placing my right hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I love you, you know.”
He ducked his head in acknowledgement.
Five minutes later I left for the restaurant. I was hoping to get in and out of there relatively quickly, but that would depend somewhat on my staff. I needed to do an inventory in the back, and that could be time-consuming.
I drove with the windows down, savoring the cool breeze that portended the end of summer. I caught the faint scent of honeysuckle as I left our neighborhood, the smell reminding me of my childhood. The flower hadn’t grown in our area of Virginia, and so I’d never shown my kids how to pluck them and suck the juice out. I felt oddly sad about that. There were so many things I wanted to show them and teach them. And the flowers … I remembered them from before adolescence, before hearing Big Bill beat up his wife, a time when things were simpler.
It took ten minutes to get to the restaurant. After I pulled into the parking lot, I sat in the car and looked through the windows at the scene inside. Second shift was still on the floor, and the cook was busy scrubbing the floor behind the counter. Two men who appeared to be in their late forties or early fifties sat in one of the booths. They looked vaguely familiar … I must have seen them on another night during shift change. Hunched over the low counter was an older man in his late seventies named Harold. Harold came in twice a day, at one p.m. and eight p.m. He always ordered the same thing: a sausage biscuit, the biscuit cooked on the grill so long that it was as hard as a hockey puck. Harold liked to tell stories and often talked about local politics and scandal, as well as long-past races at Talladega. Even though I was from the South, his Southern accent was so thick, and he spoke so quietly, it was difficult to understand anything he said.
I got out of the car and did a quick once-over of the parking lot. It had been swept, and it looked like second shift had washed the windows. I entered the front door just as Linda Poole, the third shift cook, came out of the back room. She was working with Dakota tonight.
I waved as Linda called at a near-shout, “Hey, boss!”
I checked out the restaurant. Second shift had actually done a great job, it was very clean. I thanked them then got started with the process of changing out and counting the drawer. As I entered the back room carrying second shift’s register drawer, I saw Dakota standing at the mirror tying on her apron.
“Hey, Dakota. How are things?” I only half expected an answer.
But she surprised me when she gave me a huge smile and said, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I passed my GED!” As she said the words she smiled even wider.
I set the drawer down on the surface of my desk and said, “That’s great!” I gave her a high five. Then I sat on the stool in my office. Before I started counting, I said, “So what are your plans? You going to apply at the community college?”
Doubt immediately clouded her face. “I’m wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“If you need some help figuring that out, I’m happy to talk you through some of it,” I said. “You’re a smart kid and your baby will be a lot better off if you can get any college at all under your belt.”
Her face crinkled up in a surprised smile. “You’d do that?”
“Yeah. I’ll bring my laptop in some afternoon, and we can sit down here at the restaurant and look at the local colleges. I bet you could get a Pell Grant to pay for your classes. But for now, it’s shift change, head on out front.”
Once the drawer was changed, I headed to the back room and began my inventory. Along with everything else, one of my job requirements was to inventory everything in the store three times a week. When I first started, the process would take a couple of hours. But I had it down to a science now and could usually finish the job in under fifteen minutes.
I was standing in the deep freezer, wishing I had brought a coat to work, when I heard Linda’s voice. “Boss? Can I talk to you for a second?”
I held a finger up in the air and said, “One moment.” I only had three items left on my checklist. I got them written down then stepped out, latching the freezer and then the walk-in refrigerator behind me. “What’s up?”
She squirmed a little. “You know I don’t like to make trouble…” she trailed off.
“What is it, Linda?”
She jerked her head towards the front of the restaurant. “It’s those assholes in the booth again. They’re bothering Dakota.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”
“They come in about once a week. If she’s working, they always give her a hard time.” I had a sinking feeling.
“What kind of a hard time?”
“They just say mean things to her.”
I stepped out of the stockroom and look toward the small window in the door to the front of the restaurant. I didn’t see Dakota out there. I turned around
, about to ask Linda where the hell Dakota went, but then I saw her, standing near the lockers, her back to the room. She had her head down, shoulders hunched over, hands at her side bunched into fists.
I motioned to Linda to get back out front—we didn’t leave the front of the restaurant empty when there were customers in the building. She went without saying anything.
“Dakota?” I asked.
She spun around, a fierce expression her face. But the expression was belied by the tears that marked her cheeks. She was crying. “Cole, I know the customer’s supposed to always be right. But I’m not waiting on those two anymore. I won’t do it. I don’t care who they are, you can fire me.”
“Jesus. What happened? What did they say?”
Her expression twisted into anger. She spoke in an accent, mocking the thick Alabama twang that was common in the area. “How’s your crack baby, SHANEEKWA? Or is to Toowanda? How’s your little nigger baby?”
She burst into open tears.
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
She shook her head. “No. They come in here all the time. It’s always something.”
“Not anymore,” I muttered. “You stay here, I’ll take care of that bullshit.”
I walked through the door to the front of the restaurant, accidentally banging the swinging door into the counter. Linda jumped. I approached her.
“Listen,” I said. “Can you just verify … they say those kinds of things regularly to her?”
“All the time, Cole.”
I frowned then nodded and walked around the counter to the two men at the table.
At a closer look, I could see one of the men was younger than I’d originally guessed. He had greying hair, but his skin was smooth. I’d guess he was in his late thirties. The other man was at least fifty. They looked up from their food as I approached.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Both men started in shock. The older one said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The young one said, “Hey … we were just having some fun. It didn’t mean nothin’.”
Winter Flower Page 24