“One last question. What direction did Fred come from the night he stumbled onto your farm?”
“Why should I help the devil’s minions?”
“Because I’m going to stand right here until I get an answer.” Cal stood there gazing at the old woman as the seconds ticked by. The old woman didn’t realize her life was in danger. She was as ignorant now as she was the day she met Fronik. Centaur codes were clear and absolute in these matters. Every second they lingered there gave Lelani an opportunity to come back and exact justice.
“North,” Enid said, begrudgingly. “Over the ridge. Now git!”
Her words rang true. She was too simple to lie well.
“We’re sorry to have bothered you and your brother. Thanks for the tea.”
Lelani and the others stood by the grave marker. Tears streamed down Lelani’s cheeks. She sang a haunted tune in Centauran that reminded Cal of some old Gaelic dirges he’d heard at cops’ funerals. He joined them, checking his watch sporadically. When she finished, she said, “I have to get off this world.”
Cal opened a map on the hood of the truck.
“Fronik came from that direction. That’s where we were headed before the detour. The gate is in the hills. If we took the road, we’d be spotted by sentries before we arrived.”
“There can’t be many sentries up here,” Lelani said. “Not like a garrison. Dorn’s assets are stretched thin and reinforcements are not likely for a few years our time. I went into the transfer soon after him and arrived six weeks later. There were no enemy forces behind me when I jumped.”
“If the sentries are anything like Hesz or Symian, one is plenty. We’re going to hike it from here, backtrack the path Fronik took over these hills—and hopefully gain some element of surprise.”
“I can stay with the truck,” Seth offered. “Make sure Ma and Pa Hackett don’t mess with it.”
“The truck will be fine behind the barn,” Cal said.
“There’s only a couple hours of daylight left,” Seth argued. “I’m not the woodsy type.”
“Let’s move before the sun sets,” Cal ordered.
CHAPTER 13
BY THE SHORT ’N’ CURLIES
1
“Cough,” Dr. Brown said, as he grabbed Daniel’s scrotum. He was a kindly southern gent who reminded Daniel of the doctor on Star Trek.
Daniel stood shirtless and pantless in the examining room, braced against the medicinal atmosphere and the doctor’s stethoscope, which sent a chill down his soul. When the doctor finished, he instructed the boy to sit on the examining table. The paper covering crinkled as he fidgeted; Daniel felt like a pork chop about to be wrapped.
Sheriff Maher stood in the corner, a toothpick sticking out from the bristles of his thick mustache and wearing mirrored sunglasses. The man seldom removed his hat even indoors. Daniel wondered if the sheriff took a crap wearing the hat and glasses, too. It was hard to tell exactly what the sheriff was looking at; perhaps at Nurse Shirley, who was one big smile as she assisted Dr. Brown. The nurse had retained her girlish beauty well into her forties, which, unfortunately, caused the half-dressed Daniel to be excited in a most embarrassing way.
The doctor examined the boy’s welts with soft prodding, but Daniel winced when he brushed the injured rib.
“Might be cracked,” the doctor said.
No shit, Daniel thought.
“You the kid whipped the Grundy boys?” the doctor asked.
“I plead the fifth,” Daniel answered, shooting the sheriff a glare.
Maher smiled.
“I fixed them boys up last night. Gotta say, you sure don’t look like the one who won the fight.” The doctor examined the fingers. Daniel winced again when he applied pressure to one of the joints. “Gotta say, them boys had it coming.”
“Wallace…,” the sheriff cut in.
“Now don’t give me lip, Ed. Know how many kids I treated over the years, them boys put in here? It’s a miracle no one’s sued them out of house and home already. Delinquents! You did good, son.”
“Wallace!”
“Just got to learn to duck once in a while.”
The doctor pulled out a ruler and measured the wounds. His expression changed to one of uncomfortable puzzlement.
“Wallace, I need to get him to the station,” the sheriff said. “Can we please take the photos?”
“That rib has to be wrapped, the fingers splinted … and…”
“And?”
“These marks … I’m not sure they were made by the Grundys.”
“Let’s talk outside,” the sheriff said.
“Shirley, photos and bandages please,” the doc said.
Nurse Shirley, it was easy to guess, was proud of her figure because she opted to wear an older style uniform, which accentuated it. Daniel used a pillow to hide his admiration for her curves. If she noticed, she revealed nothing as she took photos of his wounds.
“What’s this?” she asked, fingering a mark over Daniel’s left scapula. The warmth of her touch traveled down his spine to the spot he was trying to deflate. Daniel leaned further into the pillow.
“Birthmark.”
“Almost looks like a tattoo.”
“Yeah.”
The nurse began to wrap his ribs.
“I knew your real father,” she said, out of the blue. “We went to junior high together. John was a great guy. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”
Daniel was only eight when John Hauer, Rita’s first husband, died at the hands of a vicious testicular cancer. Most people believed John was Daniel’s biological father, a belief Daniel seldom dissuaded. Even Rita didn’t realize Daniel knew he was adopted. Clyde could never stand being compared to John, and revealed Daniel’s adoption shortly after he married Rita. It had been a bomb. “You just a borrowed bastard,” Clyde had said, with a smirk on his face.
But no matter how hard Clyde tried, he couldn’t erase the memory of Daniel’s childhood. John was a patient soul who had ushered joy into the boy’s early years. His death was a harsh blow to their little family, which Daniel had coped with better than his mother. To fill the void in her life, Rita chose her new companion swiftly and badly. Clyde Knoffler was an opportunist and a predator. A woman of Rita’s caliber would never have fallen for him under normal circumstances. Ignorant, penniless, he had a magnetism that gave him power over certain women. Clyde exploited Rita’s vulnerability and loneliness. Within months of their wedding he’d already spent the savings Rita and John took years to earn and pushed his new wife to the limits of her sanity. Avoiding reality was now Rita’s primary occupation.
“I was having problems with algebra one year,” Shirley continued, “and John tutored me to a B plus. He was also my first real kiss,” she said with a smile. “Who knows … if things had gone differently, you might have been my kid.”
As far as Daniel knew, he might very well be, anyway. He knew nothing of his heritage. Life was strange. Was it worth all the pain? Sometimes he worked too hard just to exist. He recognized that some people were very happy—couples who enjoyed each other, children whose primary worry was the gossip of who liked whom in school—but for the most part, people suffered. What was the point? It looked like good days only existed so that you would have somewhere to fall from.
Daniel stared out at the police station across the street from the hospital. He’d be going there next to take his mug shot and be fingerprinted. He was a juvenile delinquent, a danger to society. Just then, Clyde brushed past the window. Daniel’s heart jumped.
“Whoa,” the nurse said, navigating a roll of gauze around the boy’s torso. “Did someone walk on your grave?”
“What?”
“Just an expression. You shuddered.”
Daniel wanted to tell her that her grave remark wasn’t too far from the truth. Clyde would fly into a rage over the lawsuit. Once Clyde was in the zone, anything was possible.
“Honey, you’ve got the sweats. Are you feeling okay?”
Daniel stare
d at the door, waiting to see his stepfather walk in. He considered telling Shirley the truth in the hope that she would defend him. After all, his dad and her kissed in the sixth grade. She was practically family. Maybe she was so fond of him that she’d risk life, limb, and fortune for the child of John Hauer (who was almost hers). A minute went by, then two. It wasn’t that far from reception to his room. Maybe they were keeping Clyde out. The door opened, his heart caught in his throat. It was only the doctor and the sheriff.
“Just about done,” Shirley said.
Daniel had some trepidation about leaving the room, but with the sheriff’s hand on his shoulder he didn’t have any choice. The hallway was busy with healers and patients. They reached the waiting area and turned left toward the exit. Just then, he saw Clyde at the end of the far hall, talking to a young staffer in an office doorway. His arm, braced against the door frame beside her, gave the appearance that the woman was trapped in his clutches. She giggled at something Clyde said just as Daniel walked out of view.
2
The sheriff let Daniel sit outside his office instead of in the tank with the real malfeasants. The boy suspected the lawman sympathized with him but had his hands tied in this matter. After all, if Daniel went postal one day and the authorities neglected an opportunity to prevent it, there would be hell to pay.
Daniel wondered if he’d be forced into aggression therapy. Maybe they’d place him on antidepressants? The thought of numbing out life was inviting to Daniel. He had occasionally contemplated the “stoner” lifestyle. They were numb to life’s barbs. At least he’d belong to a clique. But that path was too similar to his stepfather’s, and that meant there’d be another generation of asshole on the way. He wouldn’t give Clyde the victory.
Rita walked into the squad room. Daniel let out a sigh of relief; a reprieve from the wrath of Clyde had been granted. He would, however, have to make arrangements to sleep elsewhere that evening. Before today, Adrian’s house would have been the best refuge, but Daniel was now more inclined to help the Grundys pound on the fat boy. No good deed goes unpunished, he thought, recalling the satisfying crunch of the two-by-four into Elijah Grundy’s face.
Rita ignored her son as she walked into the sheriff’s office. The sheriff asked Daniel to come in. He sat to his mother’s left. It was the first time all day he could see Sheriff Maher’s eyes. He looked like a fair man.
“Will this take long?” Rita asked. “My neighbor is watching my four-year-old.”
“Ma’am…,” the sheriff started—there was a sense of urgency in his tone, “Dr. Brown is of the mind that the size and impact of your boy’s injuries were not made by another teenager.”
“My son is free to go, then?”
The sheriff looked troubled that his point had been missed. “No, ma’am, it doesn’t work like that. We know for a fact Daniel was involved in the altercation with those boys and whipped them good. But, I’m still concerned about his bruises. Those marks are the fist and foot imprints of a fully grown man. Perhaps another situation, maybe at home, is forcing him to act out against his schoolmates.”
Rita sat in silence, her hands placed perfectly on her lap before her as if in prayer. Her eye contact with the sheriff never wavered. Daniel noticed the dimple, which occurred when his mother bit down on her inner cheek, sometimes to the point of bleeding.
“Ma’am?” the sheriff said.
“What are you implying?”
The sheriff rubbed his jaw and redoubled his efforts to communicate the facts to Rita.
“Mrs. Hauer…”
“Knoffler. Hauer was my former husband’s name.”
“God rest his soul,” Daniel whispered. He tried to incite a response from Rita, but she just gripped her armrest tighter. The sheriff noted the exchange.
“Ma’am, a boy that’s bullied is liable to act out in extreme ways. Possibly take things out against innocent people from sheer frustration. This is serious. Do you know anyone—adults—who have issues with your son?”
“No one has any issues with Danny. He’s a good kid. I don’t even understand why he’s here. He’s the one looks beat up.”
“Them Grundys was sent to the emergency room, ma’am.”
“Jim-Bob Grundy shaves almost daily,” she said. “He’s been left back so many times he’s eligible for the draft. Have you checked the size of his fists?”
The sheriff braced himself and asked, “Mrs. Knoffler, is your husband physically abusive at home?”
Rita didn’t flinch. “My husband is a good man going through hard times.”
A glimmer of intelligence flickered in the sheriff’s eyes; he was not convinced.
Rita seemed to waver for a moment, lost as to what to say next. Daniel stared into the well of his mother’s thoughts. Was she actually considering the truth? He knew better than to hope. Rita was not strong, at least not since John’s passing. She was terrified of loneliness and was adept at stretching the morsel of consideration Clyde bestowed her into a meal of affection.
“So, is that a yes?” the sheriff asked.
Daniel held his breath. The lawsuit, the cost of bail, these were enough to push Clyde into the zone. The world stopped on Rita’s next breath. A single assertion could end this mess—protective custody; the sheriff would shield Daniel from Clyde’s wrath.
“No,” Rita said, in a steady, strong voice. “My husband does not abuse us.”
The lie kicked Daniel as hard as Clyde’s boot. His hope deflated. His mother said it so compellingly that Daniel almost believed she was right.
“Son, is that true?” the sheriff asked him.
Daniel wondered why the sheriff asked him this in front of his mother. It wasn’t right. He looked at his mother, who still refused to acknowledge him. She was fixed on an imaginary point before her. Daniel realized Rita would waver under his pleading gaze if she turned. His mother teetered on a precipice. The sheriff realized this. Some part of her wanted to let loose.
Daniel had the power now to write a new chapter for them, but all the alternatives, all the things that might go wrong played in his head. Clyde might actually beat the rap. Daniel knew he couldn’t depend on Rita to follow through on charges. She’d waver in the face of loneliness, fear, guilt, or a missed fix. If Clyde beat the rap, he’d probably kill them. What’s more, Rita was in danger of being punished by the law, too. Besides his abuse, Clyde was involved in all sorts of welfare scams, food stamps, unemployment. She had lied about everything that was going on in that house, closed her eyes to the truth, and would be punished, maybe even jailed as an accessory after the fact.
Even if charges stuck and everything went right, a foster home loomed for Daniel and Penny; cold, industrial childrearing—guardians making a buck off the state while packs of children fight it out for attention and resources. He’d be trading one abusive jerk for a pack of smaller ones. There were no guarantees that Penny would be placed with him, so he couldn’t even keep an eye on her. And then, when Clyde got out of prison in two or three years, as her biological father he’d get Penny back anyway since he never abused her. Daniel would be long gone from the house. She’d be left to grow up with an emotional invalid for a mother and an angry ex-con psychopath for a dad. There were more reasons to maintain the status quo than to plunge them all into a legal and social upheaval.
“I just told you my husband does not—”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel cut in.
“Yes what?” the sheriff asked. “That your mother is telling the truth or that Mr. Knoffler is abusing you?”
Another chance to change—to get off the path that promised grief. Looking at his sneakers Daniel said, “My mother is telling the truth.”
Disappointed, the sheriff leaned back in his chair with an air of surrender. The boy was grateful at least for the lawman’s skeptical look. It was enough that someone important knew the truth despite the lies that were freely doled out.
Daniel realized his mother was watching him in wonder. He had ever
y right to rat out his stepfather. Clyde would never acknowledge the boy’s loyalty, only his troubles. All the precious money Daniel was costing him would send Clyde into a rage. Clyde might kill him, even if not on purpose. Once Clyde was in the zone … Daniel realized he’d just taken his life into his own hands.
CHAPTER 14
TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE
1
Of the four, only Lelani made the journey effortlessly, pausing every so often to let the others catch up. Wind that could freeze lava whipped the snow around them, but Lelani, impervious to the chill and warmed by a seething rage, trekked on. She had left Fronik’s killers unharmed by Cal’s decree. At first she suspected he might simply be protecting his own and suppressed a lifetime of prejudice against bipedals to follow his orders. But Cal’s logic was sound, and everything she’d seen until now showed him to be a just man.
The forest soothed her. It reminded her of home, which she had been away from for three years. The parks and gardens of Aandor were poor substitutes for the Blue Forest. Too long since she was last surrounded by trees and other living greens in the wild, even hibernating ones. Her companions did not find the terrain friendly or relaxing. Cat had sprained her ankle on a loose rock coming down a hill. She piggybacked on Cal for a quarter mile until they reached a rock-strewn slope where the extra weight compromised his footing. The winter sun was waning, and they had less than an hour left before darkness covered them.
“Let me take her,” Lelani offered.
“I’m okay,” Cal said.
“You are not,” Cat argued. “The last thing you need is a broken ankle.”
“I’ve had training packs that weigh more than you,” he responded.
“Oh jeez, will you let Seabiscuit take her?” Seth argued. “I’m freezing my fucking balls off out here. We’re like the fucking Sopranos lost in the Pine Barrens.”
“My lord, you should proceed unconstrained,” Lelani said. “We don’t know what we’ll find ahead.”
Cat hopped off her husband. Standing next to Lelani, she had the overwhelming urge to avoid approaching the empty area behind the redhead.
Awakenings Page 17