The Sugar Men

by Ray Kingfisher

  ALSO BY RAY KINGFISHER

  HOLOCAUST ECHOES

  Rosa’s Gold

  Tales of Loss and Guilt

  Matchbox Memories

  Slow Burning Lies

  Easy Money

  Bad and Badder

  E.T. the Extra Tortilla

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Ray Kingfisher

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503936591

  ISBN-10: 1503936597

  Cover design by Debbie Clement

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  PART ONE Weeks Not Hours

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  PART TWO The Flight and the Fleeing

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PART THREE Terror Through the Fog

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PART FOUR The Lucky One

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  PART FIVE The Wretched Legacy

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  PART SIX Settling Dust

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  Although this is a work of fiction, many of the places and events depicted are real. As befitting the subject matter I have tried as far as possible to create a story that could, realistically, have happened, and included many events that actually did. I hope my writing does justice to such an important subject, but if the story contains historical inaccuracies or I have taken liberties with some events, then I apologize beforehand.

  PART ONE

  Weeks Not Hours

  CHAPTER ONE

  She feels a sense of the passive, calming her and soothing her worries.

  There is no concept of near and far; they are one and the same.

  The experience is familiar – like revisiting a half-forgotten childhood haunt.

  She does not merely see, but feels part of.

  There is no colour, yet the scene is bathed in light of every hue. She feels water, cool, pure and refreshing, lapping around her ankles like a milky balm.

  Then the figures slowly appear from the clear light – figures so bright they are the light – approaching her effortlessly as if riding a celestial wave. She has known them a long time, but they are beyond reach, and also beyond the world of pain and suffering. Her heart aches at being near them, and feelings of love are elevated to an intensity she finds exhilarating.

  They wear white robes that are plain in design yet shimmer in the immaculate brightness. The light refracting along the edges of their garments creates a spectrum like no other – hazy and ethereal but somehow also vibrant and scintillating.

  She hears them all mention her name and they smile astral smiles.

  And then they ask her.

  She wills them to come closer – to where they belong – and as they approach she sees each one has skin as flawless as a sea of sand, and silky hair that flows like a lion’s mane.

  She has experienced this before, but now something is different: a sense of immediacy. Sometimes there are four or five of them; this time there are only three – the three tied by blood.

  Blood – a pinprick appears on the clean white robe of one of them, and his smile falters as he looks down. The pinprick quickly grows, as if engorging itself, the deep red streak soon trailing down to the bottom of the robe. Below is now only dusty earth, which scatters as drops fall onto it. One of the other figures looks down and sees that her robe too is now drenched in the blood of abandonment. She throws her head back, displaying a mouth lined with dark decaying teeth, and lets out a scream that drowns out all other noise. Then the third figure screams too, his robe now also soaked red, his skin dirty and pallid, his eyes grey and hollow above cheekbones jutting towards the sky.

  The sky.

  The sky has now turned from a white heavenly fog to a bluish- grey mist, and then it changes further to a murky black all-encompassing cloud fractured with crimson shards of lightning.

  All three figures come closer still, asking her again, and although she wants to speak to them a presence grabs her around her neck and locks her throat.

  The first figure, his face now filthy and purulent, pulls apart the top of his robe to expose a torso that barely has substance – flesh that has been eaten away from the inside, and sallow skin, ravaged by scabs and rashes, pulled taut over bones.

  She tells them ‘No!’ but still they come, reaching out their gnarled and scarred hands, the bones whitening the skin, the nails deformed, filthy and twisted.

  As they reach out and touch her she inhales and tries to force out a scream, but the presence holding her neck tightens further and there is sound only in her head.

  And at the very moment she feels the deathly touch of their clammy flesh, she wakes.

  She sat up in bed for a few moments, then slowly slid her legs to the side and eased herself onto her feet. She held her head in her hands for a moment, then wiped the perspiration from her brow and went to get a glass of milk.

  ‘Happy Birthday?’ she asked herself as she left the bedroom and headed for the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For a terrifying moment Judy thought the doctor had said ‘hours not weeks’.

  Her face must have blanched slightly at the idea, because the doctor repeated his prognosis, which was actually the reverse. As his words registered Judy let her fright go with a sigh of relief, knowing full well the relief was going to prove temporary.

  ‘However,’ the doctor added as if reading her thoughts, ‘they aren’t going to be pleasant weeks – for Susannah or you or David.’

  Judy forgave him calling her mother ‘Susannah’ instead of ‘Mrs Morgan’ – he’d known her almost as long as she had and his eyes spoke of sympathy.

  As they stepped over to the door together he continued, ‘I take it you were at the hospital with her when they went through the options for pain relief and palliative treatment.�
�

  Not only had Judy been there, but the memory of that day at Wilmington General was etched in her mind like words scraped on stone with the point of a dagger. The truth was that she’d seemed more upset by the news than her mother had.

  So, yes, she was acutely aware of the options available and nodded to the doctor. He drew breath, then took a glance up the stairs and lowered his voice. ‘I’m only warning you, Judy. You know I’ll do all I can but it might not be pretty.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As I say, we’ll make her as comfortable as possible.’

  Judy went to say something like ‘Of course you will’ out of politeness, but only a swallow came. The doctor stood at the door and more words tumbled out of his mouth. She didn’t hear them; all she heard was her mind screaming for him to get out, take her mother’s cancer with him and never come back. But she thanked him, gave him one of those closed-eye nods her mother always said were a speciality of hers, and opened the door. No more words were exchanged. The doctor just pursed his lips, returned her polite, reverential nod and left.

  Judy closed the door and held her hands flat on it for a few minutes, trying to halt the trembling, trying to still the storm that was whirling around inside her head.

  So it was final.

  There was to be no miracle.

  Visits from esteemed professors and media hordes eager to learn about a recovery that had defied the odds and astounded medical science were not going to happen. Her mother’s luck had finally run out.

  As she turned, David appeared at the top of the stairs and started loping down towards her.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  She just shrugged. What did he expect her to say? To his credit, he’d tried to take his half share in looking after their mother, but inevitably they’d grown apart sometime between their teenage years and middle age, resulting in a certain awkwardness between them when it came to discussing all things emotional. Judy desperately wanted to tell him how she felt about their mother, how the words and images in her mind got washed away with the rain whenever she tried to think what life would be like without her, but she didn’t think he would understand. Sure, she was a woman of the world and a mother herself, but at that moment she wanted him to be the big brother she’d felt so protected by when they were kids, to ask her how she felt, to reassure her that she wouldn’t fall apart without the piece of her that would disappear along with their mother.

  And then, right on cue, his phone rang.

  His first words into it were ‘I can’t be disturbed now.’

  A few seconds later he cursed, and said, ‘You know, Gary, difficult though it might be for you to understand, I just don’t care about the monthly sales figures right now. I’m at my mother’s.’

  Another pause, then: ‘I know it’s important, and I know you don’t normally compile the reports, but I’m busy. I’ll leave my phone on, but only call me if you come across any problems, okay?’

  ‘Couldn’t you switch that off?’ Judy said when he’d closed the call and put his phone away.

  He drew his head back and a hint of a scowl flashed on his face. ‘Life goes on,’ he said. ‘I still have a business to run, a family to feed, and a government to give truckloads of tax to.’

  Like Mother had always said, David was about as sensitive as a Sherman tank with its throttle jammed open. But Mother knew just as well as she did that it was little more than a front. As with all people you’re close to, they have one face for you and one face for everyone else. It was just that Judy hadn’t seen David’s face-for-Judy for some time.

  ‘So what did he say?’ He nodded to the door the doctor had just left by.

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘Oh.’

  But never mind that, Judy felt like asking, what about your sales figures?

  ‘I don’t think we should tell her,’ he said.

  Judy tried a frown that said, Why the heck not?

  He evidently got it and said, ‘At least, not for . . .’

  ‘A few weeks?’ she suggested.

  He rolled the palms of both hands over his head and they came to rest on the back of his neck. ‘I just . . . don’t want to upset her – not just yet, not tonight.’

  ‘What if she asks? She’s sure to ask what he said.’

  ‘We can just say he wasn’t specific.’

  ‘Mmm . . . okay.’ Judy nodded unconvincingly. ‘But I think one of us should stay overnight with her.’

  ‘I thought you could do that,’ David said as he headed for the kitchen door.

  And that was just like him, leaving the scene when she wanted to call him every name under the sun for being presumptuous and selfish and unfeeling. But he turned at the last moment and her face must have said it for her.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Judy. Just for tonight, I promise. It’s bad timing, I know, but it’s a critical period for the business. I should really check on it.’

  ‘And are you going now?’

  ‘No-o,’ he said, pushing his head forward as if he was speaking to a three-year-old. ‘I’m going to get a drink of water now.’

  ‘Well, make it quick. I’ll see you upstairs.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  So what did old penguin face have to say?’ Susannah said as Judy entered the bedroom a minute later.

  She was sitting up in bed with a bolster cushion behind the small of her back, her frame sagging a little at the neck. Judy didn’t answer – or at least her hesitation spoke for her.

  ‘Tell me,’ Susannah said. ‘How long have I got?’

  At that moment Judy could almost feel her face go rigid with fear – not a fear of her mother, but of telling her a truth that would upset her. All three of them had known for months that the cancer was inoperable. It had a hold on her liver and wasn’t letting go, but how long it would take for that hold to turn to a squeeze that would extinguish her life was anyone’s guess – at least, anyone but ‘old penguin face’.

  ‘He was talking about palliative treatment,’ Judy said, fully expecting her mother to pull her up for sidestepping her question.

  Susannah screwed up her face, her wrinkles concertinaing for a few seconds. ‘It’s that time, huh?’ she said in a tone that answered its own question.

  ‘He didn’t really say much about timescales,’ Judy said. ‘But it’s probably worth upping the dosage of pain relief.’

  Just then, David’s washed-out figure entered the bedroom.

  ‘So are you going to tell me?’ Susannah said to him.

  He gave an unconvincing smile and she flapped the lapels of her pure-white cotton nightdress and glanced to the window.

  Judy immediately stood up and hooked her hand towards the window. ‘Do you want that open, Mom? Are you too hot?’

  ‘I’m as fine as I can be,’ she replied, showing Judy a softer voice than she had David. Her face cracked into a fleeting grimace as she turned back to him. ‘So am I going to have to beat it out of you?’ she said.

  This time David’s eyes smiled along with his mouth. ‘God, Mom,’ he muttered under his breath. He sat down next to the bed on the opposite side to Judy. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them and leaned forward, joining the palms of his hands together in front of his mouth, as if praying.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ Susannah said.

  ‘I think we should tell her,’ Judy said over the bed to her brother. ‘She can take it. She deserves to know the truth.’

  ‘You bet your sweet ass I do,’ Susannah said. ‘And I’ll thank you not to speak about me like I’m not here. You’ll have plenty of time for that when I’m not here for real.’

  That hit Judy as surely as if her mother had given her a sharp poke with one of her knitting needles. She leaned over and laid a hand on her arm – its thin leather bruised and dotted from recent blood tests. ‘Please, Mom,’ she said. ‘Don’t say things like that.’

  Susannah held her arms out and Judy leaned further in for a brief embrace. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ Susannah wh
ispered. ‘It’s just my way of dealing with it. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  As they parted, Susannah turned to David and that timbre of motherly sarcasm returned to her voice. ‘So?’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me or do I have to phone the man myself and—’

  ‘Weeks!’ David blurted out. ‘A few weeks.’ Then, more quietly, he said the words again and started breathing heavily as if recovering from the effort.

  Susannah’s eyes glazed over, then spent a few silent minutes wandering around the room, looking everywhere except at her son or daughter. David and Judy looked to each other but both remained tight-lipped, waiting for their mother to break the silence. When she did speak again it was with a frailty Judy had only occasionally heard before.

  ‘It’s a good job I’ve said all of my goodbyes, I guess. I can’t complain that I haven’t had time to get my affairs in order.’ She looked at both of her children in turn, then shrugged and said, ‘Some people don’t get that opportunity.’

  It was then that Judy started to feel overwhelmed, and within seconds was gasping for breath, taking small gulps and holding a hand over her face. There was an urge to give her mother another hug, which she gave in to, this time almost falling onto her body and swamping her. Her mother’s arms pulled her in with as much strength as they had, and when they parted Judy sat back and saw that her mother too had tears to wipe away.

  As they both relaxed, still looking at each other, David’s phone went off again, and Susannah let out a loud tut.

  David stood up and walked over to the far end of the room. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it isn’t. That’s just not good enough. We need to reach thirty thousand at least on the Berkley portfolio.’ He held his spare hand onto his forehead for a moment. ‘Look, I can’t, Gary. Not now. Just do whatever you need to.’ He closed the call, sat back down, and apologized.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Susannah said. ‘I know life has to go on.’

  On hearing that David’s eyes now moistened too. He glared at his mother, and for a moment it looked as if his face was about to crack open.

  And then it did. He choked and gasped and covered his eyes, pretty much as his sister was doing. And then Susannah’s hand reached out and held his, and smiles broke through the tears for all three of them.