A Guardian of Innocents

by Jeff Orton

  As Kimber not only read, but preached the riot act, she saw shame appear on Galen’s face. The sight of which only stoked the flaming coals of her anger even hotter and provided her the courage to stand up to her husband all the more.

  She resorted to name-calling: sickfuck, dirtybastard, cowardlypeesuhshit. But Kimber’s near fatal mistake was when she spat the word faggot from the mouth of her reddened face.

  That was when Galen’s expression changed. The I’m-so-ashamed-I-want-to-curl-up-and-die look vanished and the drunk meanness she knew all too well returned to his eyes.

  Before she had time to react, he was already standing up and had a fistful of her deep auburn hair. Galen wrestled his wife to the floor, pinned her by placing one knee just below her sternum and began to repeatedly punch Kimber in the face. He usually didn’t go for the face but this time he was so enraged, he just didn’t give a shit.

  She was sobbing with her eyes clenched shut, trying to fight him off and hardly noticed Isaac was out of his room and screaming for Daddy to please stop hitting Mommy.

  Amazingly, he stopped. Then he answered his son, “Isaac, Daddy has to punish Mommy. Do you wanna know why?”

  Isaac only stood there crying, afraid to give the wrong answer.

  “Because your Mommy. . . just called Daddy. . . a faggot!”

  At that last word, Galen twisted the handful of hair and Kimber felt hundreds of locks being uprooted.

  As his wife whimpered with pain, a look of satisfaction and delight fell upon Galen’s face as an idea struck him, “Son, I want you to go sit in Daddy’s chair.”

  Isaac, pleading through his sobs, asked, “Please let Mommy up, Daddy. Please letter up.”

  In a violent scream that seemed to shake the walls of the house, his father hollered, “I SAID GET IN THAT CHAIR, BOY!!!”

  The shouting makes Isaac cry all that much harder and he walks slowly over to the chair, dreading what unknown punishment is to come. He knows not what it is, but knows by the horrible sinking feeling in his stomach it will be much much worse than a mere spanking.

  Galen let go of his wife’s hair and used the same hand to squeeze her throat, not enough to suffocate, just enough to get the message across.

  He appraised his wife with a curious joviality. “Divorce me, huh? Yeah, you’ll get a divorce. . . but first, you’re gonna be my bitch for a little while longer.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed his son standing in front of the chair, not sitting.

  “Better siddown, Isaac,” warns the big tough man.

  Isaac, who can hardly breathe through his sobs, slowly sits down as though the cushion of the recliner was made of razor blades.

  Galen whispers to his wife, “Fight me, and he dies,” then uses his free hand to rip her skirt open and pull her panties off.

  More horrified than she has ever been in her life, a breathless No escapes Kimber’s lips.

  * * *

  I can’t talk anymore about what I witnessed in that weird, waking psychic nightmare. I’m sure it is already painfully obvious the son of a bitch raped his own wife in front of their own son, and forced him to watch. He did it to prove to his wife, his son and himself that he was not gay.

  * * *

  I don’t really remember moving from the table and into the bathroom, or how I found the bathroom in a strange house so quickly. But I do recall that the decision to murder Galen, and the basis for the plan in which I would execute that decision, seemed to form in my head all at once as though instructions were being typed into my brain from an outside source. All this while my stomach heaved its contents into the lemon-scented, freshly-cleaned toilet I was kneeling in front of.

  My cousin had followed me down the hall, and stood just outside the door, “Ah, man I’m sorry, Phil. God, I hope it wasn’t anything in the food.”

  After a series of coughs and a stomach cramp passed, I lied and said, “Nah, I’ve actually been a little nauseous today. I think I probably just caught a bug. Still flu season.”

  Pete apologized once more and left to give me some privacy. I got both the commode and myself cleaned up and returned to the kitchen/dining room where I observed my cousin and his fiancée clearing off the table from dinner. Pete was working busily, eyes concentrated on the task at hand. Kimber seemed to be staring at some invisible object two feet in front of her face as her hands and arms went through the motions of washing dishes.

  She was obviously in shock from the whole experience but didn’t know what the hell to make of it. I could feel the tension, the apprehension and the confusion coming off of her in pulsating waves. I walked towards them cautiously, approaching Kimber from her right, thereby making sure she could see me in her peripheral vision. There was still more information that I needed from her.

  Pete excused himself and headed to the bathroom once he confirmed I was okay again, turning on the living room television as he left. I had gone to the restroom on Isaac’s side of the trailer and Pete wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left in or around the toilet that might cause his stepson to become sick. Pete, of course, was the kind of guy who would never say this out loud.

  Kimber was standing in front of the stainless steel sink, getting the dishes pre-soaked before throwing them in the washer. I stood in front of the white refrigerator doors next to her. As she reached for one of the sudsy plates, I gently placed my hand upon her wrist. It wasn’t even something I planned to do. It seemed but a mere reflex. I hardly knew her, but it felt natural.

  She wouldn’t look me in the eyes. Her chin quivered and I was close enough to see the tears building up on her bottom eyelids, threatening to spill over.

  “I need his last name,” I said, my voice a stern whisper.

  She looked at me with an incredulous expression, “You saw everything, didn’t—“

  I nodded, not allowing her to finish. As the anchorwoman on Channel 8 droned on about tonight’s top stories, Kimber pondered my request, wondering why in God’s name did I need her asshole of an ex-husband’s last name.

  I responded before she even had a chance to ask, “I could also use some other info if you have it: address, phone number, driver’s license number maybe. It might save me some time.”

  Her eyes grew very wide just then. She knew exactly what I meant to do. The thought of Galen’s death triggered a malicious satisfaction within Kimber, but she was horrified by the illegality of it. She was afraid I would surely get caught and lead the authorities back to her, and possibly Pete.

  I shook my head, feeling such a strong empathy for what she and Isaac must have gone through. “That won’t happen. I’ll see to it.”

  From down the hall, a toilet flushed, “Nothing will be traced back to you, I promise.”

  “Promise what?” Pete asked. I felt uneasiness spring to life in him as he observed my hand upon his fiancée’s wrist.

  “Promise to visit again soon!” I responded with a warm smile as I looked back up at my cousin.

  “Oh, you’re leaving already?” Pete asked, with a note of genuine disappointment.

  With my hand having already slipped off Kimber’s wrist, I offered it to him for a farewell handshake, “Yeah, I’d stay and help clean up, but I don’t want you or Kimber to catch whatever this stuff is I’ve got. I need to get home.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about that. We don’t make guests clean! I’m just sorry you feel bad.”

  After a brisk handshake combined with another one-armed hug, Pete inquired again, “Are you sure it wasn’t something you ate? Anything taste funny?”

  “No, no, no,” I assured him, “I’ve felt a little nauseous all day. I just didn’t want to cancel dinner tonight cuz I was looking forward to meeting ya’ll.”

  Pete was all smiles. “Me too. I’m glad you came tonight, Phil.

  We said our farewells. The dogs escorted me once again out of the driveway, keeping pace with my truck.

  * * *

  It was later, much later, that night when I
got a call. I awoke in bed just a few seconds before the phone rang. I found that my hand was reaching for the receiver before I was even halfway awake. I got it just as the first shrill chirp of the phone shattered the silence of the old house in which Doris and I resided.

  The conversation with Kimber was very brief and to the point. Pete was asleep, but she couldn’t sleep herself due to she was internally wrestling with her conscience about whether or not she should give me the information I requested.

  Ever the careful, plotting bastard that I am, I advised her, “Look, the phone just rang in the middle of the night, and my mother might pick up the phone any second. So let’s just choose our words carefully. Okay?”

  Catching on, she replied, “Yeah. . . Yeah, okay.”

  I orated my disposition very matter-of-factly, “Whether or not you want this to happen is irrelevant. It’s going to happen. After what I saw tonight, I’m convinced that if Shit-for-Brains is allowed to continue playing his games, that more people besides you and Isaac will end up. . . losing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now if you don’t want to give me the information, that’s fine. I can probably find most of what I need in the records sections of the public library. What I’m saying is that this will be done; it’s just a matter of time. If you want to help, that’s great. I can get this done all that much sooner. So what’s it gonna be?”

  Kimber remained silent for several seconds. Then the floodgates opened. All this information poured out of her. Last name, social, date of birth, where he worked, where he liked to hang out, the way he talked with that slight Jersey accent he was never able to fully get rid of after moving down here.

  I had to stop her to get a pen and notepad to jot everything down. She sounded exhausted, though she’d only been talking for about three minutes straight. But even then, Kimber still had to have her final say, “I don’t know exactly what happened there at the dinner table tonight, if it was some kinda shared vision or what, but you act like you’re used to these kinda things happening.”

  I sighed, “Let’s just call me gifted and leave it at that, okay?”

  I was surprised to hear a slight chuckle, “Gifted doesn’t even begin to explain everything. . . There’s something I want to know.”

  “What?”

  “When we were there, in that place. . . Who was that guy that was with you?”

  A cold shiver raced down my spine, “What do you mean?”

  “There was a guy standing behind you—While Galen was on top of me,” she whispered, “He was dressed all in black. You were standing there looking horrified and he wasn’t more than a foot behind your shoulder.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, feeling like I’d just been kicked in the gut, “I couldn’t say, but I think I’ve seen him before.”

  Chapter 7

  I knew I couldn’t rush into this. If I didn’t think everything out fully, if I didn’t account for every possible contingency, I would very likely end up dead or in prison.

  I wanted to see that son of a bitch dead. I wanted to watch him suffer. All so I could look into his eyes as he was dying and make him realize all the bad karma he had sown had finally found its way back to him in the form of a scrawny, teenage boy.

  Unfortunately, there just wasn’t a whole lot of time for plotting due to the spring semester at school had begun and I’d landed a part in an ensemble production of a play called “Waiting Room Germany,” a strange, highly artistic piece about how the fall of the Berlin Wall had affected the populace of Germany in different ways. Top that off with a weekend job manning a cash register at a large electronics store and my plate wasn’t just full, but overflowing.

  But it was when the rehearsal phase of the school play began that I made the first true friend I’d ever known. I’d had friends I sometimes hung out with every once in a while, but never a close friend, never a person that I talked to on an almost daily basis.

  It was also this friend that would give me the fortuitous break I needed to nail Galen.

  His real name was Stuart, but nicknamed Bo, a bearded, tattooed guy with arms like hairy slabs of meat. At first glance, he appeared to be the kind of guy who would bounce around from one construction job to another when he wasn’t riding with the Hell’s Angels. But he looked less like a biker and closer to a lumberjack. His light brown hair was always disheveled but never very long.

  Bo had shown up for the first day of rehearsal in clothes that were clean, but obviously old and well-worn. His leather sandals exposed the black nail polish on his toes.

  The sight of toenail polish on such a butch dude boggled my mind; he was a walking oxymoron. When he noticed my downward stare, he looked down as well and laughed, “I come from a conservative Southern Baptist family. I do shit like this just to piss ‘em off.”

  It was how we started talking. During the course of our many conversations, I learned he was a part-time musician who went to school during the day and worked security at a strip club at night.

  “Had to give up the bouncing for a few weeks while this play’s going on, though,” he explained.

  “You miss getting to stare at all those tits every night?” I asked with a smile.

  Bo shrugged, “Nah, they’re no big deal after you’ve worked there awhile. Just part of the scenery. I never even really notice them anymore—unless it’s some new girl I haven’t seen before. Mostly, I have to stay on the lookout for guys doing shit they ain’t supposed to be doing.”

  “Right,” I responded, trying to sound as if I actually knew what that might be, I figured it was probably starting fights or maybe grabbing a pair of silicone jugs during a lap dance.

  “So which one do you work at?” I asked.

  “Hunter’s Den.”

  My stomach turned over when I heard that name. The Hunter’s Den was a hang-out spot Kimber had listed as one of Galen’s favorites.

  Could he get me in? I wondered. True, I was about sixteen months away from being twenty-one, but maybe he could sneak me in the back door (or vouch for me at the front door.) We were about two weeks into rehearsals when I finally found my huevos and inquired about whether or not he could.

  His response was unexpectedly jubilant, “Sure, man! I can getcha in! No problem.”

  “You know I’m nineteen, right?”

  His expression fell into disappointment, but I saw the joke form in his mind before it ever had a chance to slide out of his mouth.

  “Shit, really? Damn, I thought you were fifteen.”

  With tongue in cheek, I smiled a little bit to be polite. Truth was I was more than a little sensitive about my baby face, peaches n’ cream complexion. It’s always made me look younger than my age. For women that might be a good trait, but it sure as hell isn’t one for men.

  * * *

  Per Bo’s advice, I took some of my spending money and bought some nice, stylish clothes at one of the more pricey stores at the local mall.

  “You wanna look like you got some money to spend so the girls will pay attention to you,” Bo explained, “Cuz if you don’t, they’ll take one look at that man-child face of yours and say, ‘Hmmm, didn’t he bag my groceries at the store last week?’”

  I didn’t want to smile at that smart-assed remark, but my facial muscles betrayed me by stretching my lips into a half-smirk. I was figuring out that Bo loved to find a person’s soft spot, the underbelly, that one thing he could exploit that would drive his victim nuts.

  I was one of five men that arrived together at the Hunter’s Den that night after rehearsal. There was me, Bo, another guy from theatre named Lloyd and two guys from Bo’s band that met us in the school parking lot.

  Bo was the designated driver, and we arrived at the strip club in his gargantuan, box-shaped van. While the vehicle’s outside was covered in hail dings and various rust formations, it spoke volumes about Bo’s mechanical abilities when the van (though a relic probably from the seventies) ran with only moderate engine noise.
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  Through the mind’s eye of my adoptive father, I had seen strip clubs. I thought I knew what to expect: sleazy skanks dancing around poles drunk (and probably high) while the DJ churned out mostly country tunes with a little bit of classic rock and maybe some 80’s hair metal. Before I walked into the Hunter’s Den, I had no fuckin’ clue there even was such a thing as an “upscale gentlemen’s club.”

  The women of this club weren’t the glossy-eyed junkies I’d prepared myself for. They were very likely the most beautiful girls I’d ever beheld in person, outside of TV and movies. The club itself was immaculately clean. The floor was carpeted, with not even one piece of trash or cigarette butt blemishing it.

  We found a table and seated ourselves in some large posh leather chairs. I spent the next twenty minutes or so enraptured by the scenery, forgetting my reasons for coming here. The entire place was dimly lit with animal-head trophies adorning the walls (not that I’m into that shit, I don’t find much sport in killing innocent animals from a safe distance) and the dance-techno music pumped out a constant bass from the speakers you didn’t so much hear as felt.

  Bo turned to Lloyd, visibly frustrated, “Take those damn sunglasses off! This place is too damned dark for you to even see anything. You’re too much of a tight-ass to be Howard Stern. Quit trying to be cooool.”

  That last word fell out of Bo’s mouth with the disgust of a guy who’s trying to shake an amorous dog off his leg. But Lloyd just sat there and pouted, refusing to budge. I could only assume the reason he and Bo were such good friends was because Lloyd was the complete antithesis of Bo. While Bo was a fun-lover who could breathe fresh life into any dull party threatening to end early, Lloyd was the kind of person who wouldn’t even smile politely when someone told a joke. He’s that one guy you might see at any social gathering who looks bored and disinterested, and acts as though he doesn’t know anyone.

  I fully enjoyed everything for about the first twenty minutes. I had seated myself so I had a clear view of the door, but had my back been to the entrance it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d been talking to one of Bo’s friends, when an urge instructed me to glance at the solid oak double-doors.