“I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing there wasn’t much else I could say that would make the situation any better for her. “I don’t know how you do it. Managing three kids. It’s like you’re not even human.”
Ray flashed me a brief smile and parked the truck in front of a small white house that looked more like a little cottage with its little picket fence and white siding. “I’m not human,” she said, hopping out of the truck. “I’m a mom.”
We spent all afternoon at Grace’s house going through a lifetime of her things and packing them into boxes to either keep in storage or donate. I’d never been to her house before, so seeing thousands and thousands of rabbits stacked on every shelf and surface was quite a shock. “They were from her husband,” Ray explained, which was the least crazy explanation for having so many little glass eyes staring at you all day.
I was on a ladder, going through the higher kitchen cabinets and I was packing away Grace’s wedding china, which I knew was her wedding china because when I opened the cabinet door I was greeted with a label that said WEDDING CHINA.
I wrapped the long stemmed glasses and gold-rimmed plates in newspaper before placing them in boxes and filling the empty spaces and crevices with bubble wrap.
When I pulled the very last plate from the back of the cabinet, something taped to it caught my attention. I turned the plate around and found that it was a picture of a baby boy.
When I read the caption on the back I dropped the plate and it shattered into a million pieces, scattering all around the kitchen in a symphony of delicate porcelain bits. “Shit,” I said, hopping down from the ladder.
“You okay?” Ray shouted out from a back bedroom.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I grabbed the broom that had been leaning up against the wall in the hallway and swept the broken pieces of china into a dustpan. I set the dustpan down and sat down at the table. I sorted through and picked up the piece that still had the photo taped to the back and shook off the dust. Maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe it hadn’t said what I’d thought it had said.
But I wasn’t wrong. The caption underneath the picture was clear.
“Ray?” I called out, confused by what I’d stumbled upon. Maybe I’d misunderstood the story of how Grace and Bear met when Bear had originally told it to me. He could be very distracting. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d gotten the details wrong.
The little boy in the picture was still in diapers though, and I could have sworn that Bear had said—
“Yeah?” Ray shouted back from the end of the hallway where she was sorting out a linen closet.
“Do you know when Bear and Grace met? Like how old he was?” I asked.
“He was a teenager,” she said, coming into the kitchen with another box in her arms. She set it down on the kitchen table and grabbed the fat black marker from the counter. Ray labeled the box RABBITS PART-SEVEN and set it on top of the other rabbit numbered boxes already stacked in front of the refrigerator. “King and Preppy met Bear when they were fighting about stupid kid shit. They all got into some sort of brawl or something and then shortly after King introduced Bear to Grace. Preppy told me the story, although I’m pretty sure he embellished a bit because the way he told it to me was that after he kicked their asses, he made them apologize to him and buy him new pants. I don’t know about you but I don’t think Bear or King were much of the apologizing type.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed.
Ray leaned on the back of the chair and set a hand on her hip, cocking her head to the side. “Why?”
I held up the picture that was clearly marked ABEL. “If Grace met Bear when he was a teenager then why does she have a picture of him as a baby?” Ray snatched the photograph from my hands, knocking over a ceramic glass ballerina rabbit from the corner of the table. It shattered on the linoleum but neither one of us reacted to the sound of the second piece of Grace’s life that we’d broken.
“Maybe it’s not really him or something?” I asked, hesitantly. Ray pulled out a chair and took a seat next to me at the table, her mouth agape as she stared down at the smiling boy who was sitting on a checkered beach blanket under the shade of a blue umbrella. “Maybe it’s another Abel?”
Ray rolled her eyes. “Another Abel, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes that just happened to be lying around in Grace’s house?”
“Maybe?” Unsure of what other logical explanation there could be.
“Ti, what do you think this could mean?” Ray asked. She’d been using Bear’s nick name for me a lot lately, and despite the fact that when I was a kid every nickname I ever had made me twitchy, it didn’t bother me at all coming from her or Bear.
“Maybe Bear gave it to her, but then why would it be in her cabinet taped to the back of a dish?” I asked.
“There is no way. Grace would have no reason to hide that. She loved pictures almost as much as she loved rabbits. If this was a picture he’d given to her it would have been in a frame displayed next to a rabbit somewhere,” Ray said, turning the picture over in her hands.
“But then why?”
Ray shook her head. “I have no idea, but whatever it is it’s making my brain hurt,” she said, rubbing her temples. She reached into the back pocket of her shorts and pulled out her phone, snapping a picture of the Polaroid. “Put this in your pocket,” she said, handing the photo back to me. “I have a feeling that the boys don’t know anything about it either. I’m not going to call now and take them out of their pow-wow, so we will have to wait until tonight to show it to them. Grace wasn’t one to keep secrets. Her policy was always about honesty, which is why this is all so confusing.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either, but it pains me to have to wait until later. My curiosity is on a level ten right now,” I admitted. Patience was never a strong suit of mine. Six months waiting for Bear didn’t help that.
“Mine too.” Ray stood up again, grabbing another empty box from the pile by the front door. “Although I think I may have to wait even longer to talk to King because lately he won’t let me get a word out before trying to impregnate me again. Chances are slim to none for meaningful conversation before he accomplishes that mission. He’s been knee deep in baby fever ever since Nicole-Grace was born.” There was a slight annoyance in her tone, but it sounded forced. “It’s like he’s not going to be happy until we have to build another house for all these kids, and I’d really like to at least have a wedding before he goes through with his plan of using my uterus as a clown car. Or better yet, turn twenty-one. That would be cool.”
I wagged my eyebrows. “Yet, I get the sense that you don’t really mind his methods all that much,” I said, pressing my lips together and trying not to laugh.
“No. His methods.” She sighed dreamily. “His methods are goooooood.” Ray looked at me straight faced before bursting out into laughter. “He has this way of making me give in to him, no matter what. He could ask me to do anything short of nuking a third world country and I’d be all, ‘mmmmm-kay.’ Makes me feel like an idiot.” Ray shook her head and used the corner of the box in her arms to point at me. “But hey! At least King wears shirts! I don’t know how you ever get anything accomplished around Bear. If King never wore a shirt, I’d stand less of a chance than I already do. I’d be in that house giving birth like the old lady who lived in a shoe,” she said, fanning herself with her hand. “On that note, I think I’ll go back and pack another box of bunnies.” She disappeared down the hall.
I took one last look at the baby in the picture before putting it in my pocket. I went back to the business of packing away Grace’s life. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t keep my mind off the photo or what it meant.
Grace may have kept a lot of rabbits in her house, but that day I found out that she was also keeping something else.
Secrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bear
The last time King and I locked ourselves in a room and got fucked up for days was when Preppy died.
This time may have been for Grace but we had every intention of following through with the fucked-up part again.
“I don’t know how the fuck you expect me to cover that entire thing,” King said, blowing out the smoke he was holding and passing me the joint. He ran his fingertips over my biggest Bastard tattoo on my shoulder and scratched his head.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re good at this shit. You covered up Ray’s scar and you did that piece on Abby’s back. Get on it man. Don’t let me down,” I said, taking a hit.
“Do you even know what you’re gonna wanna cover it up with?” King asked, pulling at the skin on my shoulder like it would somehow change the tattoo into something he could work with.
“No and I don’t care. Fucking surprise me. Anything but a big dildo or a portrait of the fucking queen of England would be fine with me as long as this bullshit is gone,” I said.
King nodded, leaning in closer to again examine the largest of my Beach Bastards tattoos on my shoulder.
“All right, fucker” he said, leaning back. “I’ll come up with something.”
“Good, now do this.” I pointed to the much smaller sketch I’d just had him draw.
“Do I look like your bitch?”
I shrugged. “No, but you’re my tattoo bitch.”
“Call me that again and you might get that dildo after all.” King opened drawers in his toolbox and started pulling out his gloves, ink, and other equipment.
“Bad Habit,” by The Offspring was blaring through the speakers in the ceiling. As I waited for King to start, my eyes landed on something I hadn’t seen in a long time. “Fuck, I can’t believe you still fucking have that,” I said, pointing to the plastic hog head on the wall. “And I can’t believe you actually hung it up.”
King looked to where I was pointing and laughed, taking a long pull from the bottle of whiskey before setting it on the floor snapping on his black gloves. “I found it in the attic. Ray begged me not to hang it up until I told her the story behind it. Now it’s her favorite thing in here.” King adjusted the height of his stool and rolled back over to the table I was sitting on. “They say you have to pick your battles,” he said, looking back up at the hog’s head. I’m glad I actually won one for a change.
I laughed but talk of a battle had my mind going somewhere else. Somewhere not too far off. “We got three days before the war. A fourth of the soldiers that they have. You think we stand a shot?” I asked King, knowing he’d give it to me straight.
“I don’t know,” King said, tapping his gun into a small plastic container of black ink. “But if we don’t do something, the threat never goes away.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth,” I agreed. “I don’t wanna be looking over my shoulder, or Ti’s shoulder, for the rest of my fucking life.” I paused, taking another hit. I held it in as long as I could and released it with a small cough as my lungs fought to push the smoke back out. “You gotta do me a favor though, brother,” I said. “If nothing else, you gotta do this one fucking thing for me.”
“Anything,” King said, pressing on the foot peddle that brought his gun to life, buzzing louder and louder as he brought it to the spot behind my right ear.
“If I lose. If I… if he wins,” I said. I dug out the cash I had buried on the island. “I need you to use it to make sure Ti is taken care of.”
“Ain’t nothing gonna happen,” King said, pushing the ink into my skin.
“I hope not, but you gotta promise me,” I insisted, King needed to know how serious I was about this. If something did happen to me I needed to know that my girl was still be okay.
“I promise. She’ll be taken care of,” King said, “but you talk like I’m not going in with you.”
“You’re not,” I spat.
“Like fuck I’m not,” King argued, pressing the needle in harder to punctuate his point.
“Fucker,” I said. “I just mean that I need you to hang back a bit. We can’t both be six feet under.”
King dipped the gun back into the ink and wiped at the spot he’d just finished with a paper towel. “Ray knows everything. We have a contingency plan if something happens to me. Shit’s in place. Don’t worry about me or Ray or the kids or even Thia. Do you, man, and I’ll be there to watch your fucking back.” He held the side of my head down with his forearm. “Now sit fucking still or your girl is going to think I’m shit at this.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, mockingly, staring back up at the plastic hog’s head. I let the pain from the sting of the needle envelope me as I remembered a better time. Less threats. More fun.
More plastic hog’s heads.
“I still can’t believe she’s fucking gone,” I said, saying the same thing to King that I’d said to Ti after the funeral.
“I can’t either,” King said. “But what I really can’t believe is that she put up with shits like us.”
“Aint’ that the fucking truth. There was this one time, when I got suspended from school, just shortly before I dropped out entirely, the guidance counselor scheduled all the parent teacher conferences. When my time slot came up I knew it would be just me and the guidance counselor because I hadn’t even told my old man about it, not like he’d fucking show up if I had. But the second my ass hit the seat in his office, Grace burst through the door wearing her church clothes.”
“I didn’t know that,” King said, concentrating on my new ink.
I smiled, recalling the memory. “Yeah, and the cool part was that when he asked her who she was she looked at him like he should’ve already known. ‘I’m Mama Grace, of course,’” I said, mimicking Grace’s voice. “The thing about her that I always liked was that no one questioned her. She really hadn’t told the counselor shit, but he told her to take a seat anyways and off they went, talking about my fucking grades and shit like she was always meant to be the one there.”
King paused his gun. “Probably because she was.”
“Yeah man. She was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bear
Eighteen years old…
“You know, you should just give back your name now. Just hand it over. ’Cause with a name like Bear, you should be fucking happy to be in the woods. You should be rubbing your cock up against a fucking tree or something. Humping the dirt. Getting off on the wilderness or some shit, not moping around like I just fucked your golden retriever. So change your name to like…Ralph or something, and just be done with it. Embrace your inner vagina,” Preppy said, waving his hand around dismissively before laying on the ground with his ear to the dirt like he probably saw someone do in a movie.
Or YouTube.
That’s it. I made up my mind right then to destroy his fucking computer when the day was over. Sleep first. Destroy computer second. Then maybe he won’t be able to search for new ways to torment us and besides, a little less porn wouldn’t hurt the kid.
“It’s not the outdoors that’s pissing me off. It’s the fucking cunt of an hour,” I muttered, running my hand through my hair. Preppy rolled his eyes and parted the leaves of a tree that didn’t need to be parted with the machete he insisted on bringing.
“So why do they call you Bear?” Preppy asked. Grabbing a handful of dirt, he tossed it into the breeze and sniffed it before the wind blew it right in King’s face.
I was also canceling the Discovery Channel.
“Do you know?” Preppy asked King who ignored his question and growled while shaking the dirt from his shirt.
“You don’t want to know,” I said with a sigh, making it sound like the reason behind my name was a lot more sinister than the real story, which was as simple as the cleaning lady at the club calling me Abel Bear every time she visited, which turned into everyone calling me Bear. Thank God she didn’t call me Abel Lovey or Abel Babydoll.
I’d be fucked.
“Whatever, RALPH,” Preppy said, and on any other day I would bitch slap him into tomorrow.
But not today.
Today
I was under strict orders from King that there would be no bitch slapping of any kind.
How many hours until tomorrow?
The sun finally started to make an appearance, shooting soft rays of pink through the tops of the trees, reminding me of the hours we’d already been awake thanks to Preppy’s 4:30am wake up call where he’d jumped on my bed like it was Christmas morning and Santa had just delivered a shit load of blow and porn.
Preppy was so amped up that for a minute I thought his excitement was going to burst right through his skin. Unfortunately, at that hour, his excitement was not contagious.
We’d driven an hour in the dark to a plot of land near Charles Harbor where Preppy was convinced we’d find the biggest and baddest wild boar, just begging to be hunted down. The way he pitched the idea made it seem like the pigs would come out of the brush waving a white flag before putting our guns to their own heads and finishing the job for us.
A sharp poke drew my attention down to where yet another bunch of sandspurs had attached themselves to the bottom of my jeans. I plucked them off and tossed them into a nearby bush, hissing through my teeth as one of the sharp-ass seedpods pricked me. A drop of blood pooled on the pad of my index finger. “Fuck,” I muttered, sucking the coppery red from my skin then waving it into the air to dry it off.
“Tell me why the fuck we’re out here again?” King asked on a yawn as Preppy led us through the tall grass and deeper into the woods. In Logan’s Beach, the woods were wet and swampy with dark green foliage and soft mud, where as the area around Charles Harbor was dry with brittle grass and hard packed dirt that cracked into pieces under the weight of our boots.
In our part of Florida, hunting after school or on weekends for guys our age was as commonplace as getting your driver’s license or feeling up your date after prom. It was what the normal guys did.
Soulless (Lawless #2) Page 15