by Thomas Pluck
“What?”
“Easy.” Strick hopped to his feet. “Joshua, that’s what she called you, in her letters. Then after her sister came, she said to call you Jay.”
They circled on the carpet.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Strick said. “I was married! Told her we’d get it taken care of, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. One damn night, it’s been haunting me for forty years.”
Jay raised the axe, teeth gritted. “What are you telling me?”
“I did what Leo told me to do! What happened to you, Jesus, how was I supposed to know what your mother would sink to? Please, I just want to be left in peace.”
Jay hunkered down, axe held loose. “You stole my damn father from me. Andre’s dead now. He died with his boy in prison because of you, so start making sense.”
Strick bolted for the door. Jay stuck a foot out, and he toppled to hands and knees.
Jay hooked his throat with the head of the tomahawk. “Start talking, kemosabe. I ain’t here to count coup.”
“You don’t know?” Strick gagged, the shadows painting his nose into a vulture’s beak. “You’re, you’re my son.”
“Like hell I am.”
“It’s true, I swear,” Strick said. “Why do you think I gave you a house? That crazy bitch T-boned my Challenger with their pickup truck! Why do you think I gave you the damn wreck?”
Jay blinked in the dim light, let the dust settle in his mind as the words quaked through his notion of what was what.
“So you’re…my father.”
“Yes! Can I get up, now?”
“Stay.” Jay traced the axe along his spine. “You ran off on me once already. Reckon you’d love to hop on that hog of yours and leave this problem behind.”
Strick hunched into himself.
“I know what it’s like to lose a father,” Jay said. “Done it twice, now. I kind of knew, deep down, I think, that I wasn’t Andre’s blood. They always said I favored my mama.”
“She was beautiful.”
“I’m guessing she still is. I just talked to her.”
A confusion fell on Strick’s eyes, but he said nothing.
“I don’t care why you did what you did. Why you never claimed me. Knew plenty inside who never knew their old man, or wish they never had. One thing I want to ask, before I let you run rabbit.” Jay said. “Ramona Crane. She would’ve been, what, thirteen, you started on her?”
The lines in Strick’s face softened, as if cherishing an old memory. “She knew what she was doing. She was a lot older than her age.”
Jay snarled and sank the tomahawk into the arm of the couch.
Strick lunged for the doorknob while Jay wrenched the axe free.
Jay swung for him and caught the door in the face. Strick ran naked for the garage, flapping down the driveway.
Jay punched the doorjamb and snarled as the jumble in his mind fell into place. Mama Angeline got the Stricks divorced. Why? She had his child.
Jay.
Joshua.
Me.
The Harley thundered in the garage. Strick wiggled the bike around the Porsche and his eyes flashed wide as Jay came running with the hatchet. He gunned the throttle and swerved onto the grass, biking bare-assed across the lawn toward the gates.
Matthew is my half-brother.
Jay fired up the Challenger and bounced down the drive, bottoming out on the pavement. The Harley’s pipes rumbled ahead of him on the dark winding road. Jay squealed after him and flipped on the high beams.
Matthew Strick is my father.
The bike appeared as a red dot at the edge of his high beams. He stomped on the pedal to close the distance.
Not my real father. Not even close.
He was a bastard son, abandoned before birth, only to be sacrificed to the law to take Matty’s place in a jail cell. Twice betrayed.
They brought me here to kill the monster torturing their children. They were too weak to forsake the money-god to whom they sacrificed their firstborn sons.
Papa Andre had raised him as his own. And they had stolen him from him.
Strick looked over his shoulder.
Jay floored the pedal and nudged the hog’s rear. Strick twisted the accelerator and burbled ahead.
Green eyes flickered at the side of the road. The bike’s headlamp illuminated a flash of tan and white. A whitetail doe sprang across the pavement.
A shriek of rubber and the Harley somersaulted into the woods. Strick hit the pavement and rag-dolled down the pavement. Jay stomped the brakes and skidded to a halt. A red and white mess of limbs lit in his headlamps.
The adjustment Jay had made to the bike’s brake piston caused the pads to seize the first time Strick hit them hard.
Jay stepped out of his blood-sire’s old steed with Leo’s bagged revolver in his hand.
The deer stamped its hoof at Jay’s approach. When he kept coming, it snorted and kicked off into the woods.
Strick looked at him with what was left of his face. Wobbled his shattered head, reached with the gnarled red rose of a hand.
Jay bent to speak into his one remaining eye.
“You are not my father,” he said, and fired.
Officer Carnahan and Detective Zelazko crowded Jay into the interrogation room and kept him awake late into the night.
“I heard what you went through, back when you were a little kid,” Carnahan said. “Of course you’re angry. I’d want to kill somebody too.”
“Your parents did a bad thing,” Leo said. “Not as bad as what you did—and we know it was you who did it—but it’s enough to put them in prison for a long time.”
“But you’re still a kid. They treat adults differently.”
“They let kids get away with murder,” Leo said. “What’d that carjacker kid get?”
“Seven years.”
“That sounds like a long time now, but it’s a blink of an eye.”
The words blurred on the page as Jay tried to read them.
“Someone’s here to talk to you. He wants to help you. I want to help you,” Carnahan said. “So listen to us.”
“I don’t,” Leo said. “I want to put you away where you belong. You and your grifter parents. But I’ll take what I can get. So listen to what Mr. Strick has to say. When we get back, I want an answer.”
They left, and Mr. Strick entered the room. Corners of his mouth twitching in nervous smiles. He sat and folded his hands. A lock of dusty brown hair fell across his dull gray eyes. He avoided Jay’s face and scanned the graffitied table and scratched hardwood floor as if he’d lost something.
“Matthew was there, too. It was all his idea.”
“I know, Jay. But if one of you took it all, the rest would be all right. You understand?”
“Why me?”
“I’m going to tell you something important,” Strick said, and removed his thin gold frames, rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief. “About how the world works. There are people who get in trouble, and people who don’t. Joey is…was…one of the people who don’t. The twins are, too. Matthew. But Anthony, and your…family, you don’t have that advantage.”
Jay wrinkled his brow.
“Your parents wronged me, and I forgave them. Leo, though. He’s the law. And the law isn’t as forgiving.”
“What did they do?” Hot tears slicked Jay’s cheekbones.
“That doesn’t matter,” Strick said. “What matters is they, and your friend Anthony, they’re the kind of people who don’t get away with things. Not unless you sign what Leo wants you to sign.”
“But that’s lying. They were there!”
“He says, with your age…you’d be out in seven years. You’ll have to get a GED, but when you get out, I can help you with college. Ramona’s a rich girl, Jay. A beautiful young woman. She’ll want to live the way she’s accustomed to, and the son of a carpenter can’t give that to her. But a college boy…he could. This might be good for you. And it’s the best deal you’re gonna get. B
ecause if you don’t sign, they’ll destroy you.”
Jay wiped his nose on his knuckle.
“Didn’t they give you any water?” Strick croaked. He replaced his glasses and looked around the room. “I know you’ve been through a lot. Matthew is weak. You, you’re made of tougher stuff.” He squeezed Jay’s shoulder. “I had plans for you.”
Jay frowned in confusion. “What?”
“Forget it for now.” Strick’s eyes crinkled and he squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Only you can stop them, Jay. I’ve got money, but Leo and Bello have power. I used to think they were the same thing, but they’re not. Not always. If you don’t do this, they’ll destroy us all. Your parents go to jail. Your friends, their lives will be ruined. Tony, his mother. Matthew and me. The twins.”
“Someone had to stop him,” Jay said. The corners of his eyes turned fuzzy.
“And you did. You did! You were the only one with the guts. And you can be strong again, and save everyone.” Strick’s words ran out in a desperate choppy rhythm. “You’re tough. Jesus, what you went through. I can’t even think about it, I get sick. But it made you into a survivor. You’ve endured so much.” His lips paled as he pressed them together tight.
“If you can take just a little bit more, all this goes away. And in a few short years, I promise I’ll make it all right.”
Leo shouldered in the door. “Hear that, Jay? Your friends need you. Your family. What’s it going to be?”
“I want to go home to my folks,” Jay said.
Leo slapped the pen on the table.
The dark of the interstate was a trench on the seafloor lit only by the fluorescent eyes of the Hammerhead. Windows sealed against the thousand atmospheres of pressure. Music throbbed against Jay’s temples, his hands squeaked against the steering wheel.
Don’t you say anything, Mama had said, too late.
And tonight she had loosed Jay like a blood dog at her ancient enemy. So he could learn things she should have told him herself.
Jay wondered if she knew he’d kill Strick. If after the Witch, he’d had any choice at all.
His throat cried for the burn of bourbon. His fists for the pain of a ten-round slugfest. He felt faceless and unanchored and severed from the past, a runaway spirit on the run from the underworld, fearing that dawn would shatter him into a thousand motes of shadow.
PART FOUR
TNT
Chapter 33
The Witch who stole the boy away from Mama Angeline and Papa Andre was a gray-faced bag of skin and bone with a jack o’lantern smile who made him call her “Mama” and fed him mayonnaise sandwiches when she wasn’t snoring in front of the little television, hand dangling a burnt spoon.
The boy would sneak out to ask neighbors for food and get shooed away. Steal tomatoes from their gardens and eat them like apples whether they were ripe or green. Walk barefoot down the road in his Fruit-of-the-Looms to the roadhouse full of men who sat slugging shots and cans of beer and stank of sweat, onions, and crude.
One of them let the boy sip beer from his lap while his dirty fingernails tapped out a rhythm on his scabbed knee. Jukebox playing a song about choogling. The boy asked what choogling was, and the man gave him a wide gator smile.
A big Cajun lifted the boy away and carried him back to the Witch. She thanked the big man and said no, no, he didn’t have to call no law. She tied the boy’s ankle to the chair leg and took the man in her room. The boy watched television until the man left. The Witch slapped him good and yelled don’t you never scare me like that again.
The Witch was often gone all night. The boy ate peanut butter from the jar with a spoon when there was peanut butter, and mustard or Miracle Whip when there wasn’t. His stomach hurt so bad he’d pray for her to come back and cook him some eggs, either snotty with runny whites or burnt crisp-edged with bits of shell.
One morning the Witch came back with shopping bags.
“I’m hungry…Mama.”
“I was making groceries,” she said. “Gonna cook some gumbo. Memaw says you like gumbo.”
The boy liked making gumbo with Mama Angeline. Papa Andre would steam crabs and pop their shells like the caps off a bottle of Coke, sweeping out hunks of meat and orange clumps of roe.
The Witch dumped flour and oil in the pot, cursing to herself as she dusted the floor white. Turned the heat on high and stirred like mad to make the roux.
“Where’s the Hershey bar?” When Mama Angeline made roux she gave the boy a Hershey bar. It was his job to tell her when the roux browned to match the chocolate color. He got to nibble while she stirred.
“You don’t put candy in gumbo, silly.”
“I’m hungry now, Mama.”
“Go find something in the fridge, I gotta keep stirring.”
He tugged the silver handle of the refrigerator door and found slim pickings. Uncapped the milk jug and gave a sniff. Sour. He put it back and closed the door. He’d learned not to pour it down the drain.
The boy sat on the matted shag rug in front of the television while the Witch stirred, muttering to herself, rough gray elbows working like knitting needles. He watched cartoons, wishing Elmer Fudd would just plumb shoot that smart-aleck Yankee rabbit, like Mama Angeline said he should.
Someone rapped hard on the door.
“You gonna make yourself useful and answer the door?”
Fear gripped him by the ankles. The men who knocked talked real loud. Yelled at him sometimes. One hit the Witch and made her cry. But the quiet ones were worse.
“Get the damn door!”
The boy’s bladder felt full all of a sudden. Like if he moved, it would let go. And Witch-mama would belt him again. For your own good.
She stomped barefoot to the door and unlocked it. “Come on in. Sit on the couch, I’m cooking.” She stomped back to the roux and went at it double time.
It was the man from the bar with the long yellow fingernails. He held a sack from McDonald’s. He sat on the couch and ate the French fries one by one. The boy smelled his onion stink over the sulfur of the thick factory town air.
“Hello, boy.” He held out a French fry.
The boy stared at a television commercial.
“I know you want one,” the man said. “Better feed this boy, he’ll disappear if he turns sideways. All your money go in your arm?”
“I’m cooking right now, ain’t I?”
He put his hand on the boy’s knee. The cracked calluses felt like the scales on the gator heads nailed to the walls in the fishing camps.
The room began to twist. The boy would be watching from inside the television soon. Claws traced over his pale skin. Warmth ran down the boy’s leg.
“Christ,” the man snapped. “Boy’s done pissed himself.”
“What?” She ran from the kitchen, shaking a spoon coated with roux.
The boy pulled into himself as the heat spread on the couch. Stinging him where he was still sore.
“One thing I won’t abide is filth,” the gator man croaked. His heavy boots headed out the door.
“Wait, we’ll wash him! We’ll give him a bath!” She ran barefoot onto the gravel. Shouts desperate with need.
As her feet slapped the trailer steps, the boy felt the bad coming. Fear prickled his skin.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” She yanked him off the sofa and blotted the soaked cushions with a T-shirt from the floor.
A burning smell filled the room. The Witch ran into the kitchen. “Ruined,” she howled. “You made me ruin it.” She held the pot, the brown roux speckled black with burnt flour. “I try to cook you dinner but all you do is hate on me!”
The dank carpet swallowed his feet and held him fast.
“You wouldn’t eat it if I made it anyway,” she screamed. “My damn sister spoiled you! Whenever I cook, it looks like you’re eating dirty fingernails!”
His eyes went watery. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry, what?”
Something rumbled inside him. I
t boiled out before he could stop it.
“You’re not my mama!”
She hurled the pot at the wall past his head with a howl, roux splashing the walls and everywhere.
A scream blew through the boy like a train whistle. His back exploded with soda pop sizzle, bubbles rippling through the skin. She dragged him to the mildewed glass shower box. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” she moaned, holding the boy screaming beneath the faucet’s lukewarm trickle.
Little Jay watched from safe inside the television set as skin sloughed off the boy’s back in white hot sheets of pain.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “we’ll put some butter on it.”
Chapter 34
Jay drowned his pancakes in syrup at the Bendix diner, an old-style railroad car squeezed onto a triangle in the middle of Route 17. Flipped open the newspaper, studied the article buried in the back.
“Unidentified Man Dies in Motorcycle Crash.”
Police had found alcohol and marijuana in Strick’s system, but were befuddled by his lack of clothing and identification, and the scarcity of whole fingerprints due to the road rash. He was so torn up they hadn’t found the bullet hole.
Jay sipped his coffee.
Strick had abandoned his boy without a name. It would be fitting if he were buried in an unmarked grave. Mama Angeline’s kind of justice.
His phone rattled across the countertop. Ramona’s number. He’d want to say goodbye, for good. Might as well get it over with. He answered. “You couldn’t tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Ramona said. “How could I tell you anything anyway, you never answer your phone.”
“Maybe there’s nothing to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Stop acting like a child. I have the house to myself, I thought you might like a swim.”
“So you can make movies for Matt to jerk off to? I’m not some chew toy for you two to fight over.”
The waitress cleared her throat as she made a pass with the coffee pot.
“What are you talking about? If this is messing with your head, come over and we’ll talk about it. If you have better things to do, I’ll swim laps by myself.”