Birds of Prey

by Crouch, Blake

  “Kill ‘em,” Ben said, stumbling toward the truck.

  He dropped Katie in the bed and climbed in behind the wheel.

  “No,” Winston said. “If the trucks don’t stop, we’ll come back.”

  Winston rushed around to the passenger-side door as the Dodge grumbled to life.

  The tires slung a stream of sand and the Dodge whipped around and sped off into the darkness like a phantom—no headlights, no taillights.

  Rufus screaming after his daughter.

  The oncoming trucks roared past, one on each side of the bonfire, and in that half-second of firelit illumination, Luther saw the truck beds crowded with teenagers hollering and drunk, beer bottles raised to the sky.

  A midnight race down the beach.

  Luther got up and started toward the bonfire.

  Rufus still screaming from the bottom of his soul, “My baby girl! My baby girl!”

  Maxine was coming to her feet, and when she saw Luther, she said, “Darling! You’re alive!”

  He ran into his mother’s arms and she held him tight for five seconds.

  Shaking.

  Sobbing.

  Then Maxine went over to Rufus and tore at his knots until the rope came loose.

  “We have to go,” she said. “They’ll come back.”

  “We can’t leave,” he said, sitting up. “Not without Kate.”

  “They were going to kill all of us, Rufus. They’ll finish the job if they come back and we’re here.”

  “I’m not leaving my little girl!”

  Maxine stared north up the beach, the noise of the trucks steadily dwindling away.

  “I’m taking Luther, and we’re going to the sheriff’s house. Stay if you want.”

  Rufus stared at his wife.

  “Are you okay, Max?”

  He reached out to touch her face but she swatted his hand away.

  “What do you think?” She took Luther by the hand. “We have to run, boy.”

  From the southernmost tip of the island, they could either bushwhack through the live oaks for a mile to the village of Ocracoke, or stay on the beach for two until it lead them to the access road that joined Highway 12.

  They started jogging up the beach.

  “We have to go faster,” Maxine said, panting.

  “I can’t go any faster, Mama.” He was crying. “My feet hurt.”

  Maxine stopped and collapsed in the sand.

  “I’m tired too, Luther, but we have to reach the sheriff. Do you understand what will happen if those men get on the ferry tomorrow morning with Kate?”

  He shook his head.

  “We’ll never see her again.” She squatted down with her back to Luther. “Get on and hold on.”

  Luther climbed onto his mother’s back, and she came to her feet and started jogging again.

  The trucks had long since gone.

  No sound but Maxine’s bare feet pounding at the tide-smoothed sand and the endless white noise of the sea.

  Luther watched the breakers and the starry sky and the dunes scrolling slowly past.

  He thought about his sister, tied up in the back of the truck.

  He didn’t know how long his mother had been running when she finally collapsed.

  Maxine hunched over on all fours and threw up in the sand.

  Luther pulled her hair out of her face.

  He patted her back.

  “It’s okay, Mama,” he whispered.

  In the weak starlight, he could see the black blood running down the inside of his mother’s thigh.

  Another image to haunt his dreams for all time.

  “Are you hurt, Mama?”

  “I’ll be okay. Just climb back on.”

  Luther snapped back into consciousness.

  His arms were draped over his mother’s shoulders, and she stood in the middle of an empty, two-lane highway, bent over and trying to catch her breath.

  “Luther, you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to walk for awhile.”

  He slid down her back and eased his shredded feet onto the pavement.

  Felt like standing on a bed of razor blades.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  “Just a half mile up the road to Dom’s place.”

  “Is Katie okay, you think?”

  “I don’t know, son.”

  Maxine started jogging and Luther followed along down the double-yellow lines.

  He couldn’t stop crying and every step left a bloody footprint in his wake, but they kept on, half-jogging, half-limping, until the first buildings of Ocracoke appeared in the distance.

  The driveway leading to the home of Dominick James was a long, single lane framed by live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

  When she saw the saltbox in the distance, Maxine accelerated to a sprint, Luther calling out for her, begging not to be left, but she didn’t even look back once.

  Luther came to a full stop and sat in the middle of the gravel road, watching the shadow of his mother running toward the house.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees.

  He’d been apart from Katie before—when she’d spent the night at a friend’s house, when she started school three years ahead of him—but it had never felt like this.

  Like he’d left a core, integral piece of himself behind.

  Like he wasn’t Luther apart from her.

  He was less than. Or some new version of himself he didn’t know or understand.

  In the distance, he could hear his mother banging on the screen door, her voice shouting, echoing through the live oaks, descending back into hysterics.

  Ten seconds later, the porchlight winked on.

  Maxine’s legs gave out.

  She was crying, screaming Katie’s name over and over.

  Sheriff James stood over her in a dark-colored robe, and as he reached down and put his hand on Maxine’s shoulder, Luther heard him say, “We’ll find her, Max. We’ll find her. I promise you we’ll find her.”

  The next morning, one of the half-dozen deputies sent out to scour the island found the Kite’s Dodge pick-up truck abandoned in front of the Tatum dock on Silver Lake Harbor.

  The Tatum’s Island Hopper had been stolen during the night.

  Thirty-six hours later, the Tatum boat was discovered beached in the swamps east of Swan Quarter, on the mainland of North Carolina.

  No Winston.

  No Ben.

  No Katie.

  The going theory was that the two convicts, now escapees from a South Carolina prison, had crossed the Pamlico Sound under cover of darkness and fled into the mainland of North Carolina.

  They’d be caught, probably within the week, Sheriff James assured Rufus and Maxine as they sat in their living room like a pair of broken figurines in clothes they hadn’t changed in five days, staring at the lawman standing before them with his hat in hand and a somber intensity in his eyes that belied the optimism he was trying so desperately to sell.

  Nearby, Luther crouched in the darkness under the staircase, beside the little door that led into the basement, listening to every word.

  But days and weeks and months crept by.

  Then years.

  They didn’t find Winston and Ben.

  They didn’t find Katie.

  And a dark cloud came down upon the House of Kite.

  The One That Stayed

  Gary, Indiana, 1983

  “Don’t leave,” Alex Kork said, tugging on her brother’s shoulder.

  The cramped bedroom was warm, and the August heat brought a funky smell. The only light came from the bedside lamp, which was shadeless, its thirty-watt bulb making the siblings look jaundiced.

  The battered, thrift-store suitcase on the bed was half-filled with meager possessions, all belonging to Charles.

  A pair of jeans with a hole in the knee.

  A striped necktie, ten years old and twice as wide as the fashion of the day.

  Black leather dress shoe
s, another Good Will purchase, half a size too small.

  A lonely, bent toothbrush.

  Tube socks, gray from repeated washings.

  Half a box of salt.

  Rubber gloves.

  Duct tape.

  A straight razor.

  A soldering iron.

  A cheese grater.

  Needle nose pliers.

  Alex eyed the pliers and felt herself shiver, remembering the first time she and Charles had used them.

  Uncertain times. Good times.

  Charles smiled. His hair was a bit longer than the current trends, and the faint mustache on his teenaged upper lip reminded her of Father.

  “There’s a whole wide world out there, Alex. I wanna see it. Don’t you?”

  Alex did. More than anything. But she wasn’t ready yet. Charles was comfortable with himself. Unlike Father, whose every waking moment was wracked by worry and guilt, Charles owned his identity. Proudly. Unabashedly.

  “I’m scared,” Alex said.

  “Of what? We’re the ones people need to be scared of.”

  Alex didn’t want to tell him the truth. That the thing that scared her most was herself. Of what she was capable of. This shithole town was like a cage. Small. Defined. Everyone knew everyone else. Easy to get into trouble, so Alex and Charles had to restrain themselves.

  There would be no such restraint Out There.

  It was an exciting thought. A sexy one. To be able to unleash their appetites on complete strangers. People who wouldn’t be missed. Who wouldn’t leave trails for the cops back to their front door.

  “You want to be a mole your whole life, Alex?” Charles said. “Like Father? Or do you want to be a lion?”

  They called Father a “mole” because he hid from people. Constantly caught in worry and doubt. Always self-loathing. Burying his shame and his nose in the dirt. Yes, he killed. But he spent so much time planning, and then later hating himself. He was a slave to his own urges. They owned him, when Charles insisted it should be the other way around.

  In contrast, lions killed their prey out in the open, stalking and slaughtering with pride and freedom. They occupied the top of the food chain, and knew it.

  “I want to be a lion, Charles. But I’m not ready yet.”

  Charles stared at her, hard.

  After a few seconds of silence, he nodded. “When you’re ready, look me up.”

  Alex felt an urge to throw her arms around him, to kiss him, to beg him not to go. But instead she reached into the suitcase and grabbed the pliers. The tool gave her strength.

  “Remember how Mother screamed when you used those on her?” Charles said.

  Alex nodded. Her breath quickened, and her throat went dry. She brought the tips to her nose, but only smelled the faint traces of rubbing alcohol used to clean them. Unable to stop herself, she touched the tip of her tongue to the metal.

  Cool and tangy.

  “Keep ‘em,” he said.

  Now Alex did hug him. So tight he grunted.

  “Easy, Sis. You’re gonna break a goddamn rib.”

  Alex eased off, but kept holding her brother’s hands.

  “What if you get caught?” Alex said. She knew she was talking like Father, but the fear was real.

  Charles smiled. “The cops will never catch me. Like that kiddie book. I’m the Gingerbread Man.”

  He winked at her, then closed his suitcase and walked out of the room.

  Alex fought down her sadness, but she couldn’t control her anger.

  Storming through their ramshackle house, weaving through the stacks of garbage piled everywhere, she reached Father’s bedroom and threw open the door.

  Father was sitting on his bed, naked, the sheets under him dotted with blood. He had a pin cushion in one hand. In the other, he held a needle, which he was sticking into his pale, flabby inner thigh.

  “He’s gone,” Alex said.

  Father stared at her, his eyes glassy, tears glistening in his stubble.

  “I’m a sinner, Alex,” he said, voice quavering.

  “Yes you are. You’re a very bad man, and you should be punished.”

  Without being told, he assumed the position, getting on his knees, making a temple of his hands in some obscene parody of prayer. His back was a patchwork of old scars and new scabs.

  Alex went to the cabinet, looked at all the implements, and chose a leather riding crop.

  “I’m a murderer, Lord,” Father moaned. “Help me atone for my sins.”

  Alex didn’t believe in God. Though part of her still feared Father, and the things he’d done to her and others, he was weak.

  Their kind shouldn’t be weak. They shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed.

  Their kind should rule.

  But what, exactly, was their kind?

  Alex had once heard a term in a movie that fit, that neatly described what she and Charles and Father were.

  Serial killers.

  Charles had embraced it. Father shunned it.

  Alex wasn’t sure which way she’d go. But she was sure of one thing.

  Hurting others was the best high in the world.

  Father trembled.

  Alex raised the riding crop.

  The first slap of leather across flesh was exciting.

  The fiftieth slap…ecstasy.

  A Night at the Dinner Table

  North Carolina Outer Banks, 1984

  Christmas Eve.

  Luther Kite watches as his mother, Maxine, carries the last casserole dish of candied yams up the staircase to the third floor cupola of the ancient house. The long table is candlelit, moonlit. Through the west wall of windows, a thin moon lacquers the sound into glossy black. Through the east wall of windows, the Atlantic gleams beyond the tangle of live oaks and yaupon. The tourists gone, the island silently twinkling, the evening is cold and glorious and more star-ridden than any night in the last three years.

  Maxine sets the yams down on the tablecloth beside a platter of steaming crab cakes. Then she takes a seat at the end of the table, opposite her husband, and releases a contented sigh. “Mrs. Claus” is spelled out in rhinestones across the front of her bright red sweater.

  Dressed up as Santa Claus, Rufus Kite occupies the head of the table.

  At Rufus’s right sits Luther, who also wears a Santa hat, but isn’t happy about it.

  “Beautiful,” Rufus says, addressing his wife, “I think I speak for everyone when I say this looks absolutely scrumptious.”

  It’s a dream, Luther thinks.

  But it can’t be.

  Because it’s real.

  Luther stares down the length of the table and sees…

  Katie.

  My sister.

  His father called it the miracle.

  Luther still remembers the flutter in his stomach when Rufus brought her home.

  “We found her, son! We found her!”

  Seven years older. Seven years lost.

  But healthy.

  And now…safe.

  Fifteen and safe and finally home.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” Rufus says, raising a wineglass filled with sweet tea. “To my little girl. What it feels like to have you home again…” His eyes shimmer with tears. “…I am…at a loss to express.”

  Tears are running down Katie’s cheeks, too.

  They pass around the side dishes.

  Luther fills his plate with raw oysters on half shells. He lifts one after another, shaking a few drops of Tabasco sauce onto the meat, and sucking it down his throat like a swallow of briny, spicy snot.

  As Rufus tears into a hushpuppy, he glances at Luther, “Boy, I know it’s strange to have her back, but make her feel welcome. This is hard on her, too.”

  “Katie,” Luther begins, twelve years old, and his prepubescent voice on the cusp of making the turn toward manhood. “How, um, does it feel to be home?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Tell her how much you missed her,” Rufus says.
r />   Luther looks at his father, to Katie, then back to his father.

  “Tell her!” Rufus roars, slamming a fist down on the table, silver and glassware trembling.

  Luther turns back to Katie.

  “Every day, I…I thought about you. I wondered if we’d ever find you.” His voice breaking. “I had forgotten what you looked like. I would think back to all the happy times, and I could remember your clothes and sometimes even your smell, but your face was always blurry.”

  Luther stares across the table at his mother.

  Seven years of grief have crept in and stolen away with her looks. Maxine has lost that striking softness he loved in his early years. Lost her perfect figure. Acquired those first few wrinkles near her mouth and hard edges and a gleam in her eyes that he’s learned to be wary of, to not set off.

  “I don’t know what else to tell her, Mama.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  He nods.

  “Why don’t you tell her that.”

  Luther looks over at his sister, trying so hard to conjure the image of that eight-year-old girl who’d been his best friend in the most important years of his life.

  Days they spent playing on the beach.

  Or down on Portsmouth.

  Or their favorite game of all…throwing chunks of stale bread to the cormorants who chased the ferry between Ocracoke and Hatteras.

  “You were my best friend,” Luther says. “I loved you so much. Remember the time the hurricane hit and we lost power and it blew down the trees in the front yard, and we had to hide in the closet all night with the wind howling? And we pretended it was an army of ghosts trying to get us, but as long as we were in the closet, we were safe?”

  “Boy,” Maxine says, “tell her you love her.”

  He doesn’t want to say it, and he isn’t sure why.

  Maybe because too many years have passed.

  Because of the audience.

  Because he’s been told to.

  Because this is all very, very confusing to him.

  Thinking it will be better to say it when he truly feels it. In a quiet moment when all is normal again.

  “Goddamn it, Luther!”

  “I love you, Katie,” he says.

  “What a beautiful sentiment,” Rufus says, leveling his gaze on his daughter. “Anything you’d like to share, darling? We just laid our souls bare to you. I understand this is a difficult transition, but we always were an open family. Never held back our feelings. I happen to think that made us as strong as we were.”