by Lee Thompson
“In the kitchen. Aiden was just talking on it earlier to Emmy, remember?”
Mitch shrugged, embarrassed, but it had been a long night, and the sooner he could bring it to a close, with his daughter and Aiden safe, the better.
Then a man who ran the small old grocery store came into the dining room, taking a mile a minute, saying, “We found tracks in the snow leading away from the house. Looks like they’re headed toward Cranberry Lane, if we hurry—”
He realized then that neither Mitch nor Jack was Pastor Clement. Then he looked at the bodies on the floor for a long moment. When he looked back up, Mitch raised the pistol and shot him in the chest. He didn’t die instantly, but lay there suffering, and that was fine with Mitch. He left Jack with the dying man, hoping he got some satisfaction out of watching his throes, and hurried to the kitchen. The room looked like a tornado had hit it. He walked over to the two men he’d injured and shot both of them in the head, not offering them a chance to beg or apologize for their actions. He found the phone, but shattered glass had severed the wire and someone had trampled the receiver, smashing it into shards of plastic.
Mitch went through the dead men’s pockets until he found a cell phone and he dialed Pine’s number. It only rang once before Pine answered. “Who’s this now?”
Mitch told him what had happened at LeDoux’s bar, then the house. It was hard to keep the fear out of his voice, the tears from his eyes. Pine sucked on his teeth for a second and then said, “They were headed toward Cranberry Lane? I’ll find them, don’t sweat it. Keep that phone on you. I was made for situations like this.”
Mitch hung up and thought: God speed...
• • •
Aria braved the slippery roads, her nerves frazzled, her eyesight hazed. She wished she’d asked Elroy to drive, to come with her to present the tableau of Pine’s crimes to their father, but the boy, as much as she liked him, was weak. Elroy would have offered little in the way of help, would have been little more than voyeur, and worse, a hindrance to Mickey’s true feelings about Pine’s collection.
He had always been different around his sons, using the weight of silence, and the hard, unforgiving set of his expression to direct them toward the route he wished them to take. The boys had been trained from youth to read his moods, and were adept at interpreting his silences. It was not so for Aria. She found Mickey’s lack of communication sometimes stifling, preferring instead how he treated her to how he treated them. He spoke outright in private, amongst just the two of them, yet she had never seen him show any sign of weakness even then; something she’d witnessed and tired of quickly with prior suitors. Men who had seemed strong, independent, and driven, once bitten by lust or love, or some combination, were like young boys returning to the state of co-dependence they’d had with their mothers; their every action and word a call to be held, coddled, and praised by a mother figure. Jack had been the only man like Mickey she’d ever met. She’d not expected that, although as a child, eight years his junior, she had seen Jack’s maturity and forthrightness many times. Like Mickey, he had a penchant for power. He could have done so much more than what he had with his lot. And looking at the fathers, she looked at their sons, so different, softer—other than Pine, whom she thought simply sick and cruel—than their patriarchs.
It was shortly after midnight when she found the driveway hidden by falling snow and masked by the deep night. The mail box was nondescript and black, the flag up, capped by snow. She turned the Lexus slowly and listened to the tires working for traction on the cracking ice. The horse fence ran parallel to the road. Thirty feet down the driveway, bordered by burdened pine trees, she came to the gate. She punched in the code and looked at the shoe box sitting so inconspicuously on the passenger seat. She pulled her foot off the brake as the gate swung open and she eased down the entrance, unable to guess precisely how Mickey would handle that news that one of his sons was so monstrous to her he seemed inhuman.
She parked on the concrete slab in front of the garage. The house was blue with white trim, and two acres from the road, five acres wide, and twenty acres deep. A building about the size of a two car garage, sat behind the house. It was a place where Mickey and the boys sometimes got together. And beyond it was a white pole barn, shining in the night, the three horses bedded down inside whinnying as they listened to the tic of her car, the snow crunching under her feet as she got out. She stood near the front door for a minute, the box tucked under her left arm. Most of the lights were out in the house, which wasn’t surprising, since Mickey was an early riser, usually asleep the moment his head hit the pillow at ten p.m., and waking just as easily at five. She had only woken him a few times, in rare emergencies, and his attitude had always been as disheveled and obtrusive as his appearance. She feared, at least a little, waking him now. She thought it might be best to wait until morning. But the morning was a long way off and the world she’d known had already changed so much in the last few hours, and she was terrified if it kept its pace, it would no longer be recognizable by dawn.
She let herself in and took off her shoes and coat and walked quietly, despite how leaden her feet felt, into the living room. At first she thought Mickey had left a light on for her, since the one by his chair glowed, but then she saw him there, leaned back into the shadows, holding a newspaper. He didn’t acknowledge her even after she cleared her throat. She sat on the couch and placed the shoe box on the coffee table. Mickey slowly looked up. He was in his mid-fifties, appeared fit for his age, his black hair having turned steel gray in the last three years since she’d walked into his life and he refused to let her go.
She lifted the lid of the box. Any other man would have asked her: What do you have there? But Mickey, although always curious, was also patient. He folded the paper and sat it on the end table and looked at the fire blazing in the hearth. He said in a gravely yet soft voice, “The phone has been ringing off the hook until a half hour ago.” He looked at her, raised his eyebrows. “You were at Jack’s bar with Mitch when it happened?”
She nodded, unable to read him, uncertain why he looked so worried. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never expected to.”
“I’ve heard them out there, driving like hell down the roads, hooting and hollering and blaring their horns and shouting things that make no sense. I was worried about you and the boys. Where are they? I tried calling Mitch but he hasn’t answered.”
“I left him a couple of messages,” she said. “Last I knew he went to Jack’s house.”
“He took Jessica there?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back and rubbed her face, exhaustion setting in now that she was in a familiar, warm place, and had settled into the couch. She was also afraid to present the box to him. He grunted and straightened up in his chair. His hands were strong and tan. He was slightly vain about them. He rubbed them together and said, “Where are Elroy and Pine?”
“I think Elroy was heading over to Jack’s house. I have no idea where Pine is or what he’s up to.”
He’d presented her an opening to discuss the young man, yet her insides felt like jelly, her tongue dry, her cheeks too warm. She excused herself to get something to drink and asked him if he needed anything.
“I don’t like them out there at a time like this,” he said.
She went into the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cupboard. She didn’t enjoy drinking, or how it affected her body or brain. Unlike many, she did not wish to numb her feelings, and usually she didn’t need to take the edge off because for the most part her life was good and she had been content. But this was a night for drinking, surely, if any night. She could get obliterated, praise Mickey to distract him from the fears he had of his sons out in the storm, amidst all the chaos, and, in the morning, with the sun causing the snow to glisten she hoped they would find the night before only a dream and of little consequence.
If only. She laughed at her own stupid hopes and slammed two shots of vodka back to back. She pour
ed a third shot, thought about Pine and the star birthmarks on his neck. Where was he now? What type of mischief could he get into while off his leash, with so many people running riot in town and the forests and back roads?
She wandered back into the living room. Mickey was on the couch, pilfering the shoebox. He didn’t look up until his eyes had catalogued every detail of every item, and she knew better than to interrupt him. His expressions were hard to read and follow. At times he seemed befuddled, at others, the flicker of a smile played on his face. When he’d finished, he placed everything back in the box, held it on his lap, and said, “What do you intend to do with this?”
“What do you think? I’m going to call the state police.”
“To what end?”
“He’s committed crimes.”
“Who hasn’t?” Mickey said, standing now. He paced the room, and he looked at her occasionally, but it was not a friendly look, and she quickly became convinced he was mumbling under his breath to Pine’s mother. He spoke incoherently for a few more minutes and she was about to jerk the box from his hands and take it to the police on her own, when he said, quite loudly, “No.”
“What was that?”
He stopped in the middle of the living room. He squared his shoulders. “This would be a titanic embarrassment to this family.”
“What about those he’s hurt?”
He smiled ruefully and she looked by his chair and noticed the half-empty bottle of Crown Royal. He held his liquor well. She said, “You’re drunk.”
“There is something in here that disturbed you more than the rest of the items combined, isn’t there?”
“Are you trying to bring this up now? After all this time?”
“We’ve never talked about it.”
“No,” she said, “we haven’t.”
She wished they didn’t have to talk about it at all, or now, after he’d been drinking. His face reddened considerably, and he laughed loudly, and he approached the fireplace and she rose, afraid he was going to dump the box’s contents into the flames. But he set the shoebox on the mantle next to a photograph of the two of them from last year, both browned and sleek from the sun and waters in the Bahamas. He turned the photograph facedown when he caught her staring at it, and he said, “Do you think I’ve forgiven you?”
“I don’t expect you to. I wouldn’t have if it’d been you.”
“Then what did you expect?”
“I expected outrage.”
He slammed his fist on Pine’s possessions, flattening the shoe box. “You want rage? It’s here, buried, but it feels remote. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t love you. Maybe I never have. But I would not have expected such behavior from you, especially not with Jack LeDoux!”
“You’re more alike than you want to admit.”
He jabbed his finger at her. “Say that again!”
“No, it only needs said once.”
“When I helped him, when I got him on his feet and walking, Jack was so grateful, you know that? He was so grateful he dragged my wife into bed, and I knew, I could smell him on her, their decadent, forbidden, secret forays. But then the cancer came so quickly and she grew so weak. I couldn’t punish her any more than fate had. But I sat by her bed there at the end, while our sons were sleeping in their rooms, and I told her I knew, and that I was glad she was dying. It was beneath me, but I would feel the same about you if you found such a curse in your bones.”
“I appreciate you showing some emotion,” she said. “For the longest time now I didn’t believe you could feel anything at all. Did you put Mitch up to crippling Jack?”
“He did that on his own. He is the oldest and it was only natural for him to possess what his father possesses.”
“What are you saying?”
“Don’t play games with me,” he said. “How can you not know what runs through my son’s head? You spend enough time with him. He’d not only kill for you, he’d die for you. He’d risk my rage. But it’d be a waste of a good boy, following his father’s footsteps, losing part of himself to some whore.”
“You have a very high opinion of yourself, Mick. And I don’t know if it’s the alcohol talking or if you mean every word you say—”
“I mean every word.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to regain the control she normally kept over herself. She didn’t want him to get worked up. His face was flushed with blood, the vein throbbing on the side of his neck. She wanted to work things out with him, to help him see that things could no longer go on the way they had, not when there was such a small child involved. She didn’t care about Jack or anyone else. She was thinking of Jessica, and worried about Mickey having another heart attack. She said, “So, what now?”
“What did you do with the money from my safe?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Did you corrupt Mitch enough that he helped you do this? All I’ve done is give, give, give, for and to all of you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He grabbed the shoebox and tossed it in the fire. He grabbed the poker from the rack and jabbed at the cardboard, holding it down as the flames curled and quickly consumed it until it was feasting wholeheartedly on its contents.
She said, “Did you know Pine is molesting your granddaughter?”
“She’s well on her way to becoming a prostitute and conniver like all women then, isn’t she?”
She threw herself at him, but he was ready and batted her arms aside and he slapped the red hot poker against the line of her jaw and she screamed, more from shock than the strange deep cold she felt arrest the side of her face.
She stumbled back and tripped over her feet and landed heavily on her rear-end. She glared up at him with tears in her eyes. He looked at her with open distaste. He said, “If it’s true, I’ll be the one to tell Mitch.”
“If you ever touch me again I’ll kill you.”
He laughed and took a step toward her, raising the iron fireplace poker, and said, “Will you now?”
She scooted back, temporarily forgetting everything else that had been or could be, her only concern to put distance between them. She cried, “Stop!”
She wanted to tell him that this was foolish, that he was going to hurt himself, or that he would hurt her worse, and later he would regret it. They would both regret it. And didn’t they already regret too many things?
He stepped forward, fireplace poker raised, and she held out her hands, tears in her eyes, her jaw aching, begging him, “Please, please, stop!”
To her surprise, he did. And he dropped the poker and his face grew pale, then slack, and he held his left arm for a moment and then touched the tips of his right fingers over his heart, his mouth making little fish motions. He looked as if he couldn’t breathe. He stumbled toward his chair and the shadows beyond the light, but fell short of both.
“Mick?” She scrabbled up onto all fours and stood. The carpet was smoldering, a light trail of smoke stinging her eyes. She touched her cheek, thought about letting the house burn with him in it, and then she groaned. She jerked her hand from her burned jawline. Looking at the end of the poker, so dark against the white carpet, she thought she could see traces of her flesh on the cast iron.
The smoke grew worse. She fled for the kitchen, retrieved a pitcher of water, doused the end of the fireplace poker, and then sat down heavily on the floor and glanced back and forth between the flames dancing in the fireplace and Mickey’s body. She told herself she wouldn’t miss him. She had not loved him, either, it was more a marriage of convenience, no use lying to herself about it now. She could afford what she wanted, which wasn’t much, although she had loved traveling. And for Mickey she had been his young trophy wife, a sign to all those who knew him, and those who didn’t, that he was the top dog around here.
She gathered her shoes and coat at the door but for a moment forgot how to put th
em on. Then she touched her jaw again and planted her head against the front door and let her tears fall freely. There was no sense in holding them in. The world was in the midst of undoing, or some kind of transformation, and she feared she and Jessica and Jack and Mitch and all the others were caught in some unknowable, irreversible process.
• • •
Bobby’s father stood in the doorway. He was an average sized man with small spectacles, a glass of wine in hand, big eyes full of disappointment. He had an air about him of superiority but masked it well with what others assumed interest and concern. He said in a moderated tone, “What are you sneaking about for, Robert? It’s late, you should be in bed.”
“It’s only ten.”
“Are you sassing me? Don’t you think that a man in my position would know what’s better for you than you would? You hurt me when you try to do this, you’re not as smart or as world-wise as you’d like to think.”
“So?”
“So, get in bed, get your rest. School tomorrow.”
“I’m going out,” Bobby said.
“Sometimes I think you want me to hurt you. Is that it? Pull your pants down.”
“No.”
“Do what I tell you or you’ll only make it worse on yourself. Drop your pants and bend over your bed. Close your eyes if you have to, if you think it’ll make it hurt less. I’ll be right back.” He sipped his wine and then turned back into the hall and disappeared. Bobby had a baseball bat near his door. His father had bought it for his birthday four years ago. He’d tried it once, but he didn’t have the coordination to make a go of it. He grabbed it now and pushed the door shut and drew back on the bat, his heart hammering and his palms sweating. The only thing he could think clearly was: Not again, motherfucker...
Waiting those thirty seconds for his father to return was about the longest time in his life. He was out there in the living room, and Bobby’s mother would see the look in his eyes, and ask: Is he home? What did he do now? But his dad would only shake his head and she’d buckle and look the other way because he’d broke her of ever standing up, so that’s why it had to be like this: the bombs, the baseball bat, anything that could smear him all over a room and silence him for an eternity.