“Goddamn it, Keno. We coulda fixed that.” Eddie’s at the bathroom door in half a second, blocking my exit with his arms braced against both doorjambs.
I wave my arms like some kind of angry preacher. “You can’t fix it. We’re being bombarded with electromagnetic waves, and these must be stronger than the one that fried the grid, because that pulse didn’t fry the solar panels or small things like fucking radios!”
Eddie’s eyes are huge and full of alarm. “Okay. But you still have to quit acting like a horse’s ass.”
“Now you sound like Grandpa. Let me out of here.”
“Not happening.”
I lower my head, ready to charge into him. “Get out of my way!”
“I’m not letting you out until you calm down.”
“I am not a goddamned kid, Eddie. You can’t put me in time-out anymore. Get out of my fucking way or I’ll knock you down.”
My eyes and Eddie’s are locked in some kind of death stare. We’re huffing at each other like buffaloes.
“Stop acting like macho assholes. Both of you!” Alma’s eyes are sad now, full of anger. And pain, lots of pain.
“Arrgghh!” I sweep my hand across the counter, and radio parts fly everywhere.
“Stop it, Keno. Just fucking stop!” She runs to our room and slams the door.
I stand frozen, scowling at the mess I’ve made of the radio and the bathroom and my life. The damage I’ve done just pisses me off more. This rage I’ve been building is spewing out of me, and I can’t hold it back anymore.
Eddie gapes at me and steps aside. I fly out the bathroom door and down the stairs.
“Alma, I’m sorry,” Eddie says, as though he’s talking through our bedroom door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with my snot of a nephew, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it. He’s been about to blow for days.”
What did I ever do? Fucking nothing but work my ass off to take care of all the broken people in this insane place.
In four long steps, I’m out the back door, slamming the shit out of it. The glass in the door rattles so hard I almost break it, too. Fuck! I pace in circles in the yard to the manic pulse of the lights above me, rage roiling in my gut and my brain. I could kill someone—if I knew who to kill to make this shit stop.
I want to stomp off into the night and keep stomping my way out of the neighborhood, out of this state and country that used to be a country but isn’t anymore. Row a boat to freaking France or Spain or Africa, where maybe they still have power and civilization. Maybe they do, but who even knows?
But I can’t leave. I’m stuck here. And wherever I go, my rage and grief will go with me like a blood-sucking leech.
Eddie jerks open the back door.
“Shit, kid!” He’s carrying a candle in a clear glass bowl that he sets on the table. He’s wearing a contorted grin, like he finds me funny, like this is some joke.
“Uncle Eddie, if I were you, I wouldn’t come near me. No telling what I might do.”
“Yep. A bit out of control, aren’t ya?”
I huff at him, curling out my nostrils, clenching and unclenching my fists.
“I’ll get us some glasses if you think you can keep from breaking them.”
“Whatever.”
“Then I’ll pour myself a glass, and I’ll sit and watch you pace. See if you can avoid drinking a bunch of scotch and talking to me about whatever the fuck is going on in your head.”
“God damn it. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way!”
“Okay, that’s a start. I’ll be back in a minute, and we’ll keep going with that.”
“What the shit is wrong with me?”
“I don’t know, kiddo, but hold that thought. And you’d better be here when I get back or I’ll hunt you down and throttle your ass.”
Uncle Eddie vanishes as colored lights pulse overhead. I flop to the ground on my butt, lean into the fence, and pound my thighs with my fists. That just makes me madder. I grab fistfuls of my hair and tug it hard, painfully hard, yanking at the roots. Hell, I don’t need to waste water on my hair. I’ll yank it out by the handful. Maybe I can bleed this rage out of me, since nothing else works. I could bleed out right here, like Tasha did.
And it’s this image forever stuck in my head of Tasha bleeding to death, her face so pale, her so scared and crying, “Don’t let me die!”—this is the movie in my mind that makes me scream out with all the force inside me.
“God, you piece of shit asshole! Why in your own name are you doing this cruel shit to us? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Now I can’t stop. I yell some crap about God having his head up his ass. I’m screeching and squalling, and my pain’s blasting out into the night. I’ve got my chin in the air, screaming at the sky, holding the ache in my gut.
Fast footsteps outside the fence. Two sets of them.
“Keno? What’s wrong?” It’s Jack.
“Did something bad happen to you, kid?” It’s Bobby.
Yeah, Bobby, like everything!
Uncle Eddie bursts out the back door.
“Thanks, guys. I’ve got this. Come on, Keno. Let’s sit on the porch, see if I can keep you from drawing a bigger crowd.” Eddie yanks my rigid body to its feet.
“Sure you don’t need some help?” Jack asks.
“Is he drunk?” Bobby asks.
“No, but he’s fixing to be,” my uncle says. “Sorry, guys. Thanks.” Eddie half-drags me to the patio. I want to jerk away from him, but he’s stronger than a goddamned gorilla. He plops my ass into a chair.
From the corner of my eye, I see Jack and Bobby still watching me, colored light flashing on their faces. Jack is frowning hard.
“Bobby, Jack,” Eddie says, “I found some scotch. If you guys come back with a glass, I’ll give you some.”
Jack says, “Patrolling,” and nothing else.
“Right. Well, if you come back at dawn, chances are, we’ll be here.”
“Y’all drunks be careful over here,” says Bobby.
“Might want to go inside,” Jack says. “Especially if more yelling’s going to be involved.”
“Duly noted,” says my uncle. He stoops down to face me. “Keno, buddy, is more yelling going to be involved?”
“Fuck if I know.” I’m still holding my gut, trying to breathe right, letting my hair hang in my face to hide the look of it. “Y’all better go patrol. Something bad could be happening while you’re over here shooting the shit.”
“Yeah, I think we’ll do that.” The disappointment in Jack’s tone cuts me to the quick.
CHAPTER 30
Uncle Eddie looks me over while I slump in the chair and avoid his gaze. He’s got glasses on the table, but I’m waiting for the goddamn scotch.
“Don’t move, and if you’re a good boy, I’ll get that scotch now.”
“If you want a good boy to drink with, you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“I’m looking for my good Keno. You know, the heroic one? What happened to him?”
“Off in the ozone somewhere. If you’re not gonna get the scotch, I’ve got pacing and shit to do.”
“Sit tight.” Eddie steps in the house and grabs a bottle off the table. He comes back, pours two drinks, and thrusts a glass toward me. “Take a big swig, kiddo, then start talking.”
I want to slap the glass out of his hand. “If you’re gonna interrogate me or some shit, I’m already done with this.”
“Drink it and shut up then. Why should I give a flip?”
“Some bedside manner you’ve got.” I grab the glass and choke down the biggest swallow I can take.
“Keno, you know you need to talk, so get on with it.”
“So, you’re some kind of therapist now?”
“That’s right. This is Eddie Crenshaw’s scotch therapy session, and
you are on the clock. I’m more expensive per minute than a rich-assed lawyer.” He pulls a chair in front of me and scoots up until our knees are almost touching.
Eddie watches me and takes a slug. I see that my glass is almost empty, so I chug the rest.
“Do much drinking before, Keno?”
“Not much, but I’ve been drunk a few times.”
“Okay, good to know.” He leans forward and refills my glass. “Make that last longer than a minute.”
“Got a timer?”
“So, are you gonna tell me what’s going on in that brilliant, screwed-up brain of yours?”
Crickets chirp in the silence that follows, like they came on cue or some shit.
“What did you do, sleep with someone else?”
“What kind of question is that? You know I love Alma.”
“Not acting much like it, are ya?”
“Apparently not. Is my minute up yet? Because I’m finishing this drink now.” I gulp down the drink and thrust out the glass for a refill.
“This one has to last two minutes,” he says while he pours. “After that, it’s ten.”
“Fair enough.” I take another slug.
Uncle Eddie leans back in his chair. “When you were yelling just now, did I hear you yelling at God?”
“Good ears you’ve got on you. I called God a piece of shit asshole, I believe.”
“That’s what you think God is?”
“Right now, I do. Don’t know what I’ll think tomorrow.”
“I thought you were a guy who liked God. What made you change your mind?”
I’m in the middle of killing that glass of scotch when he says this, and I almost choke. “You really have to ask me that?”
“I’m asking, aren’t I?”
“Shit, Eddie. Take a look around, why don’t you? If you can see past your nose in this dark-ass place. Oh, wait—if you’re not blinded by the swirling, colored strobe lights from the sun that just burned up every civilized thing we had left.”
That knocks Eddie back a few beats. Takes him a minute to say, “Seems like you’re in a dark place.”
“Never said I wasn’t. I think the two minutes are up.”
“I don’t want you puking. You need to slow down.”
“As soon as I quit feeling like this, I will.”
“Feeling like what, exactly? You still haven’t told me shit. Are you going to be like this all night, or are you going to talk about your bullshit?”
“I don’t know what to say about my bullshit. I just want to get drunk so my bullshit will go away for one fucking minute.”
“It’s that bad then, your bullshit?”
“Pretty bad, I’d say.”
Eddie squeezes my knee. “Keno, honey, you’re killing me here.”
“Seems to be what I keep doing tonight: hurting people I love.” I suck down my whole glass of scotch and hand it to Eddie. He fills it, looking in my eyes like a plea. “I hate hurting people I love, but mostly, what I hate, what I really truly hate—”
My hand starts shaking with the scotch glass in it. I feel another eruption coming, an eruption like Mount Vesuvius.
Eddie sees my hand. “Better drink that before you drop it and waste it,” he says. So, I slug it, and then he sets the glass on the table. He grips both my hands, looking so deep into me that I can hardly look back. He murmurs, “Tell me. What do you really truly hate?”
“God.”
“God and?”
The eruption comes, this time as a torrent of tears.
“Me! I fucking hate me!”
I have stunned myself.
My eyes are glued to Uncle Eddie’s, and his are so sad.
I’m shaking like a shutter in a hurricane, and my face is slippery wet. An upsurge in my core drives me to my feet. A loud, scary moan comes out of my mouth, rushing up from deep in my gut, deeper even. I stumble into the yard and the streaming light.
Eddie grabs my shoulder from behind and wheels me around. He clutches me to him so hard that air shoots from my lungs into his face. He jams his fingers into my hair and pulls my face against his shoulder. I squirm around, trying to escape, trying to get more air so I can moan and scream again, and he squeezes the crap out of me until I collapse into him, letting him hold me.
“Shh, baby. Shh,” he says.
“But I—”
“Shh. Just cry, honey. Cry until you can’t anymore.”
And so I do. Loud-ass wailing cries, with whimpers and breath-catching in between. Then moans—loud and quiet and squeaky moans that hurt me, scraping across my insides, shooting across my throat like a rasp, exploding from my mouth one after another after another.
It’s like I have an anguish generator inside me, pain and rage and heartache I’ve been holding inside since the sun zapped us, some since Tasha bled to death, newer pain about Nana being gone. Moans over my dad leaving us when I was two then moving to Cali when I was twelve. Cries of rage about Ray. Wails over that poor guy Rick, his life cut short when all he was trying to do was generate some light in this dark world.
Moans and wails about me hurting Alma, that she might stop loving me, and why should she love me? Alma, who would never deserve to be hurt by anyone, but especially by me. I’m supposed to take care of her and cherish her forever.
Then sobs over my paralyzing fear of the birth and how the baby and even Alma could die, and there being no doctors or medicine to save them, and my crippling dread of accidents that could hurt them, or assholes with guns running loose in the world who could show up any minute to shoot us all dead.
Eddie’s shaking with me. His heart pounds hard and fast next to mine. He’s got a grip on me that could crush me, but it’s a little too gentle for that. Like he’s holding me together against forces working to rip me to shreds. I freaking love Uncle Eddie, and I have hurt him. Still, he’s trying so goddamn hard to help me.
“I’m right here holding you, Keno, and you’re safe, so just cry.”
I wrench myself away from him. “No one is fucking safe! I don’t even care if I’m safe. What about Alma and the baby?”
“Things will get better.”
“You don’t know that! People are getting killed by the National Guard. They’re supposed to protect us, but they killed Rick. And we have asshole criminals watching our house and robbing us of our only way to replant. Even God is out to get us with that rainstorm. And now the sun’s gone ballistic again. There’s no reason to think things will get better. They get worse every day! This is the life we’re stuck with for what might as well be forever.”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. What does this have to do with you hating yourself?”
“I’m supposed to make things better! But every time I try, I fuck it up.”
“Who told you that you have to make things better?”
“Nana did.” I point at my chest. “I did.” I look at the lights shooting across the sky. “I promised Nana on the day she died that I would get us some power, but now I can’t keep that promise. I also promised to take care of everyone, and I can’t do that, either.”
There’s no candlelight in our bedroom window. Alma must be so scared and lonely, feeling all her pain. And instead of helping her like I need to and want to, I’ve wounded her more. She’s been hurt too much by life, and I made her think I would never hurt her, like I fucking tricked her, since I ended up hurting her, too.
Something rustles behind me. I freeze inside and whirl around. There’s a shape looming in the side yard.
“Who’s there?” I shout, wishing I had my damn gun.
“It’s me,” says Mom. “I heard you crying and ran over here from the Zizzos’ place.”
“Aww, Mom.” I can’t say more. The moans and wails are gushing out of me again. Mom rushes to me and hugs me from the front while Eddie hugs
me from behind.
“Can I sit you down?” Eddie asks. “I need another drink.”
“No shit,” I mutter with half a sad chuckle, wiping my hands across my face.
“You’ve got something to drink? As in liquor?” asks Mom, who’s crying with me but also excited at the thought of booze.
“Hey,” I say, “the skylights are fading away.”
“Yep. That should be good, right?” Eddie says.
“They’ve already done their damage, so…”
Mom and Eddie lead me to the glider, closer to the guttering candle in its bowl. Mom sits beside me, wrapping me in a hug and rocking me in the glider while I cry and stutter for air, quivering in my mother’s arms like a two-year-old.
“I’ll get you a glass, Erin,” Uncle Eddie says.
Mom snuggles her face against my hanging head and strokes my shoulders. “Is that scotch I see? Real live actual scotch?”
“Fucking A.” Eddie disappears inside.
The scotch bottle on the table might hold the answers to the universe, the way the candle glows through the amber liquid and throws a golden haze over the world, and Uncle Eddie looks like a wavery spirit made of light when he comes back outside with Mom’s glass.
CHAPTER 31
“Keno?”
Someone’s poking me. I can sleep through this, no problem.
“Keno!”
I jerk my head up. A sledgehammer pounds me in the forehead and knocks me back to the pillow. Or, shit, maybe not. A vise is squeezing the crap out of my head.
“Are you still drunk, Keno? Alma said you would be. She’s super-pissed at you.”
Who’s talking? And why’s my head in this vise? I can’t open my eyes. I mean, I try to, but the sun knocks my eyelids closed. I’m not awake anyhow.
“You must still be drunk. That was some stupid shit to do.” Is that Mazie saying I did stupid shit?
I might have to puke. If I raise my head again, I will definitely puke. Like I can even figure out how to raise my head.
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