by John Dixon
The transients mimicked him.
“The Crown of Glory bathes you in its blessed light,” he told them.
“Yes, Lord!”
Downhill, the green sedan appeared, bumping toward them over the rutted access road.
Perfect.
Gesturing to the bundled money, he said, “I am the god who sacrifices to his people. My blessings unto you, children. May these gifts and my promise sustain you until we are rejoined.”
As he descended the weedy hillside, vials and syringes crunched beneath his boots. The faithful cleared a path, bowing and kneeling. Some shied away, terrified in their awe.
As they should, he thought.
The sedan stopped. Beautiful Sadie, twenty-five years old and already gray, beamed at him and slid into the passenger seat.
Jagger gave Sadie just the hint of a smile.
She beamed up at him. “You’re filthy,” she said, but her tone was all joy and lust.
“I’ve been on the road for a long time.”
“Too long,” she said, and the pink tip of her tongue peeked from between her white teeth.
He turned back to the gathering of transients staring down at him.
“Signs and wonders,” he said to them, and raised his hand overhead, once again making the sign of the Crown of Glory.
The motley congregation aped him.
Then he extended his thumb and did something they could never, ever replicate.
They cried out in terror and adulation as the rucksack he’d left behind rose into the air, drifted over their heads, and lowered slowly into his hand.
He shouldered the bag, walked around the car, and slid into the driver’s seat.
Sadie grinned like the cat who’d tortured the canary to death before eating it. “You’re getting stronger.”
He nodded. His power swelled every day. Yet he’d lost time again, hadn’t he? There were times when it felt—
But no. He couldn’t consider those things now. Not with everything coming together.
“I am pleased with you,” he said, putting the car into gear and bumping away over the rough road. “Give me the sitrep.”
“Operation Softball Glove is good to go,” Sadie said. “They’ll deliver your message tonight—with a bang.”
THE HOUSE WAS DIM AND silent and cold. Gooseflesh rose along Scarlett’s exposed skin. Ever since Afghanistan, her father had kept their home at morgue temperature.
“Mom?”
Silence save for the faint ticking of a clock.
She felt a twinge of hope. Maybe they’d bumped into friends at the ceremony. If so, she could leave a note and bolt. Spend the night at a friend’s. Let the whole thing blow over.
Jumping off the quarry cliff had jarred her out of the funk, but now she felt the blues flooding back in.
“Mom?”
Coming down the hall, she smelled food, and her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since…when, precisely? Last night? She stepped into the kitchen but stopped dead in the doorway.
What is this?
She saw chips and pretzels, crackers and cheese, fruit and vegetables, lunch meat and sandwich rolls; glass dispensers filled with tea and lemonade and Mom’s cucumber water; stacks of red plastic cups alongside tubs of melting ice packed with wine and beer and soda; two dozen liquor bottles sitting beside mixers and wedges of freshly cut lime.
A cake covered half the kitchen table. Across white icing, blue lettering shouted, CONGRATULATIONS, SCARLETT! WE KNEW YOU COULD DO IT! LOVE MOM, DAD, AND DAN.
They’d planned a huge surprise party for her, but…
I ruined it.
No one had even bothered to cover the food. In the reckoning silence, she could hear flies buzzing back and forth from feast to feast.
A shotgun blast of emotion filled her with conflicting impulses. She felt like shooing the flies and covering the food…or speeding away on her Yamaha to go somewhere and get blackout drunk.
Instead, she picked up a handful of salami and stood there eating, caught in an unfocused stare. Hearing a sound, she blinked. Her father stood in the doorway, staring at her with disgust.
“Use a plate,” he said, and offered a bitter smile. “There are plenty left.”
Scarlett grabbed a plate from the counter, but her hunger was gone. She set the meat on the plate and placed the plate on the counter and grabbed a napkin and wiped the grease from her fingers. Crumpling the napkin, she noticed the custom printing: CONGRATULATIONS, SCARLETT!
Her father stared, saying nothing. Flies buzzed.
“Where’s Mom?” she finally asked.
“She’s resting.”
Resting. That meant she was up there crying, waiting for the Xanax to kick in.
Her father uncapped a bottle of Jack and poured himself a double.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d been on the wagon for years. “You’re drinking?”
He lifted the tumbler, gulped down half the whiskey, and turned to her with dead eyes. “Want to make this about me? After what you did?”
“Hey, I—”
“Your mother did all of this for you,” he said, gesturing toward the ruined feast, “and you just blew off graduation. Didn’t even call her.”
“I texted her.”
“Bull.” He sipped his whiskey. “You know she never checks her phone.”
“I—”
“You bailed and didn’t have the guts to tell us. Now you’re blaming your mother?” He shook his head and swallowed the rest of the whiskey. “You’re a real peach, kid.”
Scarlett said nothing. Out in the world, nothing scared her—not cliff diving, popping wheelies on the freeway, or running from the cops—but her father always made her feel weak.
He poured another double. “I spoke with Sergeant Mitchell this afternoon.”
It took her a second. “The recruiter?”
Her father sipped his whiskey. “You meet with him Monday morning, 6:30 a.m.”
She shook her head. “I’m not joining the Army. I have plans.”
He rolled his eyes. “You missed the application deadline. Besides, you wouldn’t last a semester. Forget flunking. You’d self-destruct.”
“No I wouldn’t,” she said, but her words came out in a whisper.
“The Army will teach you the things your mother wouldn’t let me teach you. Responsibility, discipline, character.”
“Is that what you were doing when you hit Dan? Building character?” The man had never hit Scarlett, only Dan. He’d just ignored her and scowled at her with contempt.
He spread his hands. “Look at your brother now…and look at you. For all of your mother’s mollycoddling, are you happier than Dan? No. He’s proud, part of something real, working hard toward a goal that’s bigger than himself.”
She looked at her feet.
Her father said, “You’re a beautiful, athletic, intelligent girl, but you’re soft. You dominated every sport you tried…and quit every one. You coasted through school. You don’t even keep a steady boyfriend. There’s more to life than just scooping ice cream and chasing boys. It’s time to grow up, quit sampling flavors, and commit to something real.”
She looked up. “Nice vanilla life, huh? Be happy, like you and Mom?”
“You’re selfish,” he said. “That’s the point. You have the potential to make the world a better place, but you just sit on the sidelines and twiddle your thumbs.”
“I don’t owe the world anything.”
“You owe the world everything,” he said, “and the world demands far more of women than it does of girls.”
“In two weeks, I’m going to Europe with Ginny,” she said, wanting to be done with this. “We’re going backpacking and—”
He gave a condescending snort, tossed back t
he rest of the whiskey, and reached again for the bottle.
“You can’t stop me,” she said, hating the weakness of her own voice.
He laughed. “My daughter, Peter-frigging-Pan in female form.”
“I have money saved.”
“You’d burn through it in a week, partying. Sure, Ginny would loan you more, because she’s a spoiled brat, but sooner or later you’d piss her off, and she’d leave you in the lurch. And who would have to bail you out? Me, that’s who. Because your mother would divorce me if I let her baby learn a real lesson.”
Scarlett felt sapped. “No, it won’t be—”
“What about a passport?” he asked with a grin. “Were you planning on picking one up at Wawa on your way to the airport?”
Something crumbled inside her. The passport…
“The party’s over, Scarlett. Time to quit scooping tutti-frutti and become an adult.”
Everything was crashing down. She’d printed the passport application months ago, but…
Something in her father’s eyes softened. “Hell, kid. I know you’ve got it in you. You’ve proved that. What you did that night last summer…” He shook his head.
A tickling sensation crawled over her scars, and she could all but hear the woman and her child screaming as the car burned around them. “You would’ve done it, too.”
Her father shook his head and stared into the empty tumbler. “No, I couldn’t have.”
“In the heat of the moment, anyone can be a hero.”
He stared into her eyes. “You did something miraculous that night.”
She could only shrug. The tickling along her scars turned to an itch.
“There’s a special strength inside you,” he said, “waiting for you to call upon it.”
Scarlett remembered the woman smiling as her hair burned. “I hope I never have to call on it again.”
“Sometimes we must suffer to find happiness. It’s the nature of mankind. At leisure, we stagnate. But under the worst conditions, we evolve.”
They stood there, neither of them capable of anything like a deescalating embrace. In the silence, Scarlett again heard the flies—and music now, faintly, classic rock, playing in the backyard. She looked out the window and saw the old Jeep parked beside the garage, speakers and a beer sitting on its hood.
“Dan’s home?” she asked, shocked.
“He came to see you graduate.”
She felt a surge of excitement. She hadn’t seen Dan since Christmas.
Her father swirled his whiskey and smirked. “Careful. He isn’t very happy with you.”
Scarlett walked past him and pushed out the door, leaving the tomblike home and stepping into the heat and noise of the backyard.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” her father’s voice said, and the door shut between them.
OUT IN THE WARMTH OF the sunny backyard, with classic rock blasting and the world sprawling away in all directions, Scarlett instantly felt lighter and more energetic.
Dan’s legs jutted from beneath the Jeep, a new tattoo shining on one muscular calf. Zeppelin replaced the Stones.
Scarlett grinned. Such a Dan scene.
A thick arm covered in tats shot out from beneath the Jeep and patted around the grass. The hand closed on a wrench and dragged it back into darkness.
“Dan,” Scarlett called. “Hey, Dan!”
Nothing.
Scarlett stopped the music. “Hey, bro.”
A grunt. The wrench shot from beneath the Jeep. Next came a thick arm streaked in motor oil.
Scarlett flinched. When they were kids, Dan had been terrifying, but he’d changed after joining the Corps and escaping the beatings. He’d never apologized, but he went out of his way to be nice to her now. She knew that he was sorry for how he’d treated her growing up and knew that she had been catching secondhand beatings from an older brother driven half out of his mind by steady abuse. Dan hadn’t hurt her in years, but hearing the grunt and seeing that thick arm—did oil always look that much like blood?—she stiffened with apprehension.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” she asked, trying to sound natural.
Dan’s face emerged, looking weathered and hard. “Where were you?”
“At the quarry,” she said, “celebrating with a friend.”
Dan stood, looking pissed. He’d put on even more muscle since she’d last seen him. “You blew off graduation for some guy?”
“He’s smoking hot,” she said, trying to keep it light. “Hey, I’m sorry. If I had known you were coming, I would’ve been there.” She spread her arms. “Give me a hug.”
Dan stuck out his palm like a traffic cop. “You made Mom cry.”
She took a step back. “I texted her.”
He advanced, jabbing the air between them with his stubby finger. “Don’t try to talk your way out of this.”
“Hold on,” she said. “I’m sorry that—”
“Sometimes sorry isn’t enough,” he said. “Your actions have consequences.” He drove his finger into her shoulder, hard.
“Hey,” she said. The poke must have hit a nerve. Even as the pain faded, force radiated in little waves from her shoulder into her chest.
“Dad’s drunk,” Dan said, and shoved her. “Because of you.”
“Hey,” she said, suddenly angry but also afraid of her brother in a way she had never expected to feel again. The force of the shove pulsed into her, lingering like an echo. Weird. “Don’t pin that on me. Dad’s an alcoholic. The guy’s wired to drink.”
“Spare me, Scarlett. Your whole life you’ve tried to sweet-talk your way out of everything.”
He stiff-armed her high on the chest—half shove, half strike—and she stumbled backward, shocked. The force of the thumping blow radiated through her…but not out of her. It bounced around inside her chest, joining the echo of his earlier attacks. Her whole body was thrumming now with fear, anger, and whatever was happening inside her. “Quit pushing, Dan. We’re not kids anymore.”
“Exactly. You’re eighteen now. Time to grow up.”
Another push. This time both hands thudded into her chest. She almost fell but caught herself, feeling strangely steady and strong, as if her body was absorbing the force and feeding her muscles, supercharging them. Pent-up pressure filled her, demanding release. Through gritted teeth, she said, “Stop. Pushing. Dan.”
He pointed toward the hedge and the folding tables draped in white linen. “They called off the party. You humiliated the family.”
“Nobody told me about the stupid party,” she said, “and I sure didn’t ask for one.” The pressure inside her shook and hissed like an angry rattlesnake. It hurt like the world’s worst heartburn. Was she having a panic attack? A heart attack? Whatever the case, the whole scene was hurtling toward disaster. “I’m out of here.”
“Don’t turn your back on me,” he said.
She came back around, meaning to tell her brother to shut up, and—smack!
Her head jerked sideways. She was stunned not by the blow, which wasn’t that hard, but by the sheer fact that Dan had slapped her in the face for the first time in years. She had thought that all of that was behind them, that things had changed, that he had changed. She felt shocked and angry but also distracted and bewildered because rather than lingering as hot pain on her face, the force of the slap plunged straight into her, stoking the inferno in her chest.
“I won’t let you ruin your life,” Dan said, marching straight at her. “You’re joining the military.”
“I’d rather die,” she said, and something in her, perhaps spurred by the firestorm at her center, ratcheted into place like a cocked revolver, spinning her away from fear and shock and locking her into anger.
Dan bulled forward, dipped low, and drove his shoulder into her gut.
Her back slammed into the Jeep, and the volcano within her erupted.
She lashed out with both hands, shoving. Her palms hammered into his burly chest, and her arms snapped to full extension. Dan flew away, tumbling through the air, and thudded to the ground several feet away.
Scarlett blinked in disbelief. She breathed hard, shaking. The pressure was gone, its energy released. What had she just done?
Dan sat up slowly, holding his chest and grimacing with rage and something Scarlett had never seen on her brother’s face before: fear. He picked up a wrench. “Don’t know how you did that, but I’m going to—”
“Stop!” a voice screamed from behind them.
Her mother leaned from an upstairs window. The fancy hairdo she’d been so proud of now hung in crazy disarray, framing a face twisted with anguish. “I can’t take it anymore! You’re killing me. Is that what you two want? Are you trying to kill me?”
The shame was too much to bear. “I’m sorry,” Scarlett said, her voice a faint whisper.
Her father came out the back door, shouting.
She sprinted around the house, shouldered through the fence gate, and jumped onto her Yamaha. Her muscles throbbed. Explosions of pain popped like fireworks in her skull.
She kicked the motorcycle to life just as her father rounded the house.
“Scarlett, you come back here!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She popped the clutch and zoomed out of the driveway. A horn blared. She jerked hard to the right, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. Then she leaned over the gas tank, twisted the throttle, and shot away from the mess she’d made.
WHY ARE YOUR FRIENDS NEVER around when you need them?
Nobody at the park but that old creeper Biscoe, the guy somewhere between thirty and fifty, used to buy Scarlett and her friends booze for an extra buck or two. In those days, Scarlett would search the park, desperate to find Biscoe and score a cheap six-pack or a fifth of rotgut. Now, with seemingly limitless access to any drink or drug on God’s green earth, she saw Biscoe not as a bastion of hope but as what he really was: a sad troll with rotting teeth and a bad liver, the guy’s brain so pickled from sleeping outside and drinking cheap piss that he couldn’t even hold a conversation anymore. You’d slit your wrists out of boredom before he got to the frigging point.