Malus Domestica

by Hunt, S. A.

  46

  THEY DROVE SLOWLY UP Broad in Kenway’s Chevy. Even after two days, the street was still littered with a rock-concert aftermath of trash and cast-off clothing. The city had towed away Doc Gendreau’s overturned Suburban and the water company capped the broken fire hydrant outlet, but the amount of debris in the road was… well, the word “excessive” came to mind. Many of the shopfronts near the central plaza were busted out, leaving jagged-toothed mouths plundered of their contents.

  Nobody could give the cops a straight answer as to why a riot had broken out in uptown Blackfield. But the prevailing theory, going on hearsay and conjecture, was that the car accident that kicked it off—the garbage truck running a red light and slamming into the Suburban—started with bystanders pulling the driver of the garbage truck out with the intent of beating him to death and it escalated through mob mentality and pure panic into a full-fledged riot.

  They never learned who the driver of the truck actually was, or how he’d even gotten his hands on it…but the mutilated body of a man named Roy Euchiss (brother of renowned shitheel Owen Euchiss) had been found in the wreckage of Fisher Ellis’s comic book shop, beaten to death. The acid damage to his skin seemed to corroborate Joel Ellis’s story of what happened Sunday, and the fact that Michael DePalatis’s (partner of renowned shitheel Owen Euchiss) body was found with Joel’s stolen car seemed to link the brothers as accomplices.

  The cops were still processing his fingerprints against prints found in Black Velvet, but Robin was sure they were eventually going to agree that the guy with the smashed face was the one and only Serpent that had been sending them creepy, taunting letters for the last couple of years.

  She also had the feeling that the twin brothers might have even been sharing the Serpent name from time to time.

  A deep sigh blew from the little boy beside her.

  Robin took Wayne’s hand and leaned over, looking into his eyes. We’ll find him. The look of stony misery on his face broke her heart.

  Kenway pulled into angle parking in front of his art shop, put the truck in gear, and turned it off.

  He sat there so long that even Wayne looked over at him.

  “You okay?” asked Robin.

  “I sold the shop,” said Kenway. One of his big hands came up and he scraped an eye with the heel of his hand.

  She saw his face twist up and that was all it took to compel her from the truck and around to his side. She opened the driver door and took his arm, and Kenway turned in his seat, dropping his face into his hands. He started crying into them, urgently, a great shuddering-shaking that elicited deep, hitching gasps, hup-hup-hup-hup-hup.

  Robin took his wrists. “Hey! What’s wrong?”

  “I sold the shop, Robin,” he said between sobs. He let her pry his hands down. His face had turned a livid red and his eyes were bloodshot. Sitting sideways had tugged the cuff of his left pants leg up and the prosthetic foot clanked against the rail under his seat. “I sold it early this afternoon over hup-hup-hup lunch.”

  “I can’t say that was the best of ideas,” she said, “but why are you crying?”

  “Because I’m letting him down again.”

  “Who? Let—”

  Oh. Ohhhh.

  She had figured it out, but she didn’t need to, because he said, “Hendry. Chris. My old buddy.”

  “…Ah.”

  “I made breakfast and I let him d—” He cut himself off, and pain flashed across his face. “…I let him down, and now I’m sellin the shop and leavin town.” With the last word, anguish tightened inside him and he squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heel of his fist to his forehead.

  Fresh tears rolled into his mustache. “I’m leavin, man…and it’s like he’s dead all over again.”

  Just seeing this big man crying his eyes out made Robin want to bawl too. She pushed his hair out of his face with her fingers and held his face. Veins thumped in his temples. “You’re not letting him down, babe,” she told him, her own eyes burning, “you’re letting him go. You’re lettin him go on. He’s letting you go.”

  He shook his head, his fist still jammed against his eyebrow.

  Wayne undid his seatbelt and got up on his knees, putting a hand on Kenway’s back. She caught his eyes over the vet’s shoulder and they traded a concerned vibe.

  She let him cry it out for a little while.

  “I did it because I needed to,” he said.

  “You did,” she agreed.

  “I need to quit…quit kicking around this town—”

  “Quit kicking yourself.”

  He nodded. “That too.”

  “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for what he did.” For a change, she took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead. “You did what you could, and he did what he felt like he had to do. None of that was on you. Okay?”

  Kenway nodded, scrubbing the corners of his eyes with the collar of his shirt.

  By now it was completely dark, and bright sharp stars glittered through holes in the gray tent of the sky. The Halloween night air was brisk and drafted down the street in damp, heavy canvas waves. A block down the street, a troupe of college-age trick-or-treaters walked by on their way to some party or other, screaming and laughing.

  Robin got her jacket out of the truck and put it on against the chill of the night’s breeze. The hoodie looked anachronistic on top of the witch-gown.

  When the knot in his chest finally loosened, Kenway dug in the door pocket for a handful of napkins and mopped his face with them. A sodium vapor streetlight behind them cast a dismal, rust-orange light over the scene.

  “I’m probably ruinin your surprise, ain’t I?” he asked, and blew his nose.

  Robin couldn’t help but chuckle. “No, no, not at all.”

  She stepped back to let him get out and he wadded the napkins into a ball, stuffing them into his pocket. Wayne got out and he shut the door.

  “Come on,” said Kenway, taking a shuddery breath. Heat lightning flickered silently across the pendulous clouds.

  They followed him down the block to the little side parking lot reserved for the dentist’s office and the Mexican restaurant. Robin’s CONLIN PLUMBING van was no longer there—it was parked against the curb next to Joel’s house—but parked in the slot where it had been was now a motorhome.

  “Oh my God,” said Robin, venturing closer. “You did not.”

  “1974 Winnebago Brave. I know a guy… he collects stuff like this. You should see his property, he lives on the road goin south out of town, across from the Methodist church. Old VW bugs all over the freaking place.”

  The Brave was one of the ugliest, boxiest things she’d ever seen. It resembled an ice cream truck, with a racing stripe down the side that bobbled near the front fender to form a heartbeat W. Kenway unlocked the door and opened it, and she climbed a tiny set of metal stairs into a wonderland of wood paneling. The inside of the motorhome was a cross between a treehouse and an armoire.

  “I thought you might appreciate sleeping on a bed,” he was saying, “even if it’s an RV bed, a lot more than a sleeping bag in the back of a panel van.”

  Her throat closed up when she saw the sink full of ice and the bottle of champagne.

  “That’s for drinkin, not for smashin,” Kenway said, climbing into the motorhome. The whole thing lurched to one side as he filled the narrow space with his bulk. “But if you really wanna christen it, I got a bottle of Boone’s Farm some girl left in my fridge last Christmas after my Army unit party.”

  Wayne climbed in and sat in the dinner nook. “Cool,” he said, listlessly staring around. His eyes were dim, bleak flashlights with old batteries. His hands rested on the table as if he couldn’t remember what they were for.

  Kenway stood in the galley gauging him. He opened the cupboard over the stove and took out a stack of clear party cups. “You know what, kid?” he said grimly, but encouragingly. “You need to take the edge off. How about you share this wine with us?”

 
“It’s champagne.”

  “How about you share this champagne with us?”

  Wayne stared into the back of the RV. “Yeah? Okay.”

  He checked his phone for the ten-thousandth time. A few moments ticked by as Kenway stood there with the bottle in his hand.

  “Shit,” he said, “I forgot to get a corkscrew. I’ll be right back.” He buried the bottle back in the ice and went outside, the motorhome shaking like a wet dog. There was a faint, metallic clank as he opened the toolbox on the back of his truck and then heavy raking noises as he rummaged through tools and other assorted detritus.

  Wayne looked up from his phone. “I can’t believe you guys are gonna sit in here and drink champagne while my dad’s still out there somewhere. With that witch.”

  Robin had forgotten she was dressed as one. The Lycra witch-dress hugged her slinky, boyish figure so tightly it began to make her self-conscious.

  The windows flashed softly as heat lightning danced across the sky again. Sitting down in the breakfast nook across from him, she took his hands with her pasty green ones and looked into his face with deadly seriousness. “We’re going to find them. I promise. I’ve found every witch I’ve looked for up til now…and this one won’t get away either.”

  He watched her, the blinds-filtered light glinting on his glasses, the cellphone coloring his jaw a ghastly blue. The sky guttered the windows with lavender lightning.

  “You hear me?” she reiterated. “We will find your dad.”

  He nodded, perhaps a bit dismissively, and went back to flipping through the apps on his phone.

  “No. Listen.” She leaned in and looked up at his face again.

  He smouldered at her in irritation, but at least he was paying attention.

  “I will turn every stone, I will burn down every house, I will fight every demon between here and Hell if that’s what it takes.” She sat back, letting her hands slide away from his. “I’ve killed to get where I am, and I ain’t afraid to do it again. … So don’t count me out, little man.”

  In the reflection on Wayne’s glasses, she saw an eerie green gleam in her own silhouette’s eyes.

  To his credit, he didn’t flinch.

  Kenway stepped into the Winnebago again, tilting it crazily. He held up a pair of channel-lock pliers. “Never leave home without em.”

  Robin shook her head. “You are such a redneck.”

  He picked up the champagne and clamped the parrothead of the pliers on the cork, twisting it like a stubborn bolt, and it came out with a heady thoonk!, gurgling white foam into the sink. He filled three cups with it and carried them to the table. Robin scooted over and let him sit down.

  Wayne sipped at the champagne and wrinkled his nose. “Tastes kinda like ginger ale.”

  He finished it off. “I think I like beer better, honestly.”

  “Well, uhh!” Kenway tossed his back and slammed the cup on the table with a feeble clap of plastic. “I had no idea you was a grown-ass man, Mr Connoisseur!” The vet pushed himself to his feet and started to pour himself another, then decided to drink it straight from the bottle.

  He gave a shudder. “Aight, maybe you got a point. I got some Terrapin and some Yuengling in my apartment.” He pulled the plug on the sink to let the ice-water drain.

  Robin took the bottle from him and pulled a swig. “I concur.”

  Kenway paused in the door to study her face.

  “What do you think?” His face seemed to be asking, Did I do good?

  She smiled widely. “I think you spent a hell of a lot of money and gambled your place away on a girl you barely know, but … I do love it.” The wooden cabinets and walls glowed a soft cheese-orange in the darkness. “I really do.” She slid her arms around his neck and squeezed him tight. The bottle in her hand rolled across his back.

  He pulled her against him and he gave her an earnest hug. “Thank you,” he said, his face muffled by her jacket. “For understanding. For standin there and lettin me cry it out.”

  She pulled back and looked him in the face. The laugh-lines under his eyes were wet.

  She scraped them with her thumb. “Of course.”

  They stepped down out of the Winnebago and Kenway locked it. Robin stood there, her eyes playing over his broad back, and she wondered what he was thinking, wondered how she’d let this man so easily slide into her crazy life where so many others before him had bounced right off. She thought about asking him if she was just his ticket out of town, but decided that the random crying jag over his friend and the fact that he actually had the money, and the means, to leave Blackfield whenever he wanted, must have meant that this was a conscious, deliberate decision on his part.

  Was she, though? Was she just the means to an end? Was she an excuse to leave? Robin wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the cold a little bit more than usual. He did seem to have real feelings, but…if she let him in, was he going to stay?

  “Are you sure you want to be my cameraman?” she finally blurted out. ‘Cameraman’, here, having evolved beyond its original platonic connotation.

  Connotations, she thought, isn’t that where the magic is?

  Kenway turned, hope lighting up his red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more.”

  She realized it was the first time she’d seen anything like it since she’d met him. The even-keel Zen complacency she’d come to associate with him hadn’t been contentment at all, it had been a… lost-ness. A sort of bleak one-foot-in-front-of-the-other dormancy. His perceived failure to save Chris Hendry had been a self-imposed prison cell.

  “Even after what you’ve seen?” she asked.

  Taking out a pack of cigarettes, he tapped one out and tucked it into his mouth. He produced a lighter. “Yeah. Hell, all that probably did the opposite of running me away.” He cupped his hands around his face and lit the cigarette, putting the lighter away. They started up the sidewalk to his shop.

  “Ever since I met you,” he said, the cigarette’s cherry flaring, “it’s like… it’s like….”

  He pincered the cigarette away from his face, jetting a stream of blue-white smoke. “Well, lemme put it like this: do you have any idea how much body armor weighs in the Army?”

  “I can’t say I do.”

  “It’s a Kevlar vest with ceramic impact plates capable of stopping assault rifle rounds. The Kevlar fabric by itself is like wearing a leather jacket, but with the plates in, it’s forty pounds or more, especially with extra side plates, codpiece, helmet. It’s heavy as balls, but if you wear it all day you kinda get used to it. But at the end of the day? When you take it off? Suddenly all that weight is magically gone. You feel like you’re walking on the moon. Your step is all spring.”

  His beard parted with a broad smile. “Ever since I met you, it’s like I took off my armor. I can breathe again. The gravity’s so low I could jump right out of the atmosphere.” An anxious hand crept up to rub his face. “And, you know, well, I don’t … really want to give that up. You know?”

  The corner of Robin’s mouth quirked up. “I know.”

  He unlocked the front door of his art shop, the cigarette cherry glowing in the dark shapes smeared across the glass, and pulled it open. The front area presented them with long smears of pale gray: the rollers and spools of his vinyl machines.

  Robin and Wayne followed him through the shop and into the garage. Wayne’s face was traced in blue by his cellphone screen. She could see that he was texting his father again. “I’ll have to teach you how to play cornhole,” Kenway told him, as they started up the stairs to the loft apartment. “You’ll like it. Fun stuff.”

  “Mmm,” Wayne grunted noncommittally.

  An electronic bink! came from the top of the stairs.

  Wayne froze, staring at Robin’s face. His glasses were white squares, refracting the screen of his cellphone.

  His thumb danced across his phone. They heard the bink! come from upstairs again. “DAD?!” Wayne screamed, scrambling up the stai
rs toward Kenway’s apartment.

  Robin lunged for his ankles and missed. “No!” she screamed after him. “Don’t go up there!”

  The boy reached the top of the staircase and disappeared over the crest. Robin and Kenway thundered up after him, his titanium foot clanking and thunking like a robot, the champagne sloshing in her hand. Rising into the lightless apartment, she scanned the dark shapes around them, trying to pick out something familiar, something human.

  Wayne was in the open kitchen. The white-eyed shadow snatched up a square of light and waved it over his head. “It’s his phone! It’s Dad’s phone!”

  “Come on,” Robin told him, her arms and neck prickling. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  He came over, holding up Leon’s phone and his own. “Why is Dad’s phone here? Is Dad here? Why would Dad be here? He’s never even been here, has he?”

  She took his wrist. “Come on, we got—”

  “AAAH!” screamed Kenway, lurching forward onto one knee. The cigarette fell out of his mouth.

  Robin spun, startled, to find Leon Parkin.

  Both his hands were wrapped around the Osdathregar, and Leon had jammed it deep into Kenway’s back. Heat lightning blued the clouds outside, briefly turning the windows overlooking the canal into a bank of television screens.

  A strange silhouette, squat and angular, stood against the squares of dim light. The apartment plunged into darkness again.

  We’re screwed, Robin knew, we waltzed right into this, as Kenway crawled away on his clanking leg, the silver dagger jutting from his back. She moved toward the maniacally grinning Leon, clenching her fists and preparing for a hand-to-hand.

  She still had the champagne; she’d break it over his head. I got to take him out of commission first, she decided, but Wayne’s hands slammed into her chest.

  “No!” the boy shrieked, “don’t kill him!”

  As soon as he shoved her, Wayne ran at his father. Leon threw his arms wide, his eyes and teeth flashing in the abyss of his black face. Wayne plowed into his belly and both of them teetered over the edge of the stairs, falling into the stairwell. The sound of them tumbling down the risers was a sickening drum solo of knees and elbows.