Dani gasped and said, “Mommy, you swore!” and Emma held to Cindy’s leg and giggled.
I told her, “That’s already been established.”
Then I swung a leg over the seat and eased myself down. “I need a little shakedown cruise, babe. That’s all. I need to take it through the gears a couple of times. Make sure I didn’t knock something out of place.”
She reached out then and put both hands on Dani’s shoulders. “You see this?” she asked me.
I said, “I do.”
Then she did the same with Emma. “You see this?”
“I do.”
And she put a hand on her own belly. “You see this?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then put your helmet on and make sure you’re back here in time for supper.”
And I was too. In fact I was a few minutes early. I didn’t waste any time out at Pops’ storage unit. I came back with five thousand dollars in cash, which I would use on Monday to pay off my hospital bill. I also came back with a couple of boxes of .22 longs for Pops’ old revolver. My plans for them weren’t yet specific.
Come Monday morning, Cindy headed off with Dani. She left ten minutes early so she could have “a few choice words” with the vice principal, she said. Cindy is usually a very low-key girl, always the quiet one in a crowd, but I didn’t envy anybody who got in between her and her little ones. That vice principal, and anybody else within spitting range, was in for a good tongue-lashing.
My plan for the morning was to spend some time with Emma, doing whatever my little Princess wanted to do, even if it meant sipping imaginary tea with her and Pooh Bear. Then I’d call Pops and ask him to come sit with her for an hour or so while I paid a visit to the hospital. So I set Emma up at the breakfast table with some French toast with sliced bananas and a cup of milk, and went off to grab a shower and shave.
Emma and Dani both know they aren’t supposed to answer the phone if it rings, or go to the door if somebody knocks. They know this. Which is why my heart jumped up into my throat when I stepped out of the shower and heard voices in the kitchen. I barely got the towel around my waist before busting into the kitchen like a crazy man.
I got to admit, seeing Cindy’s mother, Janice, sitting there at the table with Emma was a hell of a relief, even if Donnie was over at the counter, helping himself to a cup of coffee. Janice looked up at me and grinned. “Well aren’t you looking good this morning,” she said.
My first thought was that Emma was safe. My second thought was that I’d already told Donnie in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t welcome in my house. So I said to him, hoping to keep my voice calm enough not to scare Emma, “What are you doing here?”
He set the cup down and held up both hands. “I only dropped by for a second. There’s something I need to talk about with you.”
I pointed at the back door. “Outside.”
Janice said, “You going outside dressed like that?”
I was too angry to answer. I went into the pantry and out the back door and waited for Donnie to follow me.
The moment the door closed behind him I said, “What did I tell you?”
“I know what you said but this is for your own benefit. I’m worried about my daughter and those little girls.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what those McClaine boys have against you,” he said, and before he could say another word I felt myself stepping up close to him, so close he fell back against the outside wall.
“Hold on!” he said. “I’m just delivering a message is all!”
“Then deliver it.”
“All I was told is, ‘He knows what he owes us.’ That’s all Phil said. And that he wants it back now.”
“What do I owe him?” I said. I’m standing there up against him, all but naked, barefoot in the grass. He’s maybe two inches taller than me in those cowboy boots he always wears, but I’m feeling so goddamn huge right then, so fiery hot and huge with rage even though every inch of my skin is bristling with goose bumps. It was unlike anything I ever felt over there with you, even in our worst moments. Over there I was almost always scared, straining to hear every noise and flicker of movement. But there in my backyard I felt, I don’t know . . . so hungry for violence I was shaking. Does that make any sense to you? Did you ever feel like that?
I’m ashamed to admit there was something, and I don’t use this word lightly, but something glorious about the anger and hatred I felt. God, I wanted to tear him to pieces. I wanted to rip him apart piece by piece until I was dripping with his blood.
“I told you,” he said, barely breathing now, and God how I loved how scared he looked at that moment. “I don’t know nothing about nothing. All I know is what he told me. You have something of his, he says, and he wants it back.”
“Or what?” I said.
“Huh?”
“What if I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about? Which means I can’t give him back whatever he thinks I owe him. What then?”
“Hell, Rusty,” he said, and that did it for me, that finally tripped the trigger, him calling me Rusty the way Pops sometimes did. My hand shot up and around his throat so fast and hard that his head banged back against the wall. Both his hands went to my wrist, trying to pull me off, but I knew I could kill him if I wanted to. And I wanted to, Spence. I wanted to pinch his head right off him.
“You ever call me that again,” I told him, “and it will be the last word you ever say.”
I stood there like that another five seconds or so, feeling how easy it would have been to crush his throat and be done with him. Then I let go and stepped back. “You have five seconds to get off my property,” I told him. “You don’t, I’m going to finish the job right now.”
He didn’t say a word. Just ducked away from me and hustled toward the street, coughing all the way.
I went inside and said to Janice, “Donnie’s waiting for you out on the sidewalk.”
Maybe it was the way I said it, I don’t know. Maybe I looked as monstrous and invincible to her as I felt. Anyway, she got up and kissed Emma goodbye and was out the door and gone.
I have never in my life felt an emotion like that one. Like I was the elephant, you know? All loaded and cocked to rape the living shit out of anybody who even dared look at me the wrong way.
And now I’m wishing you were here to tell me it was a good thing I felt that day. In fact I almost wish I was back over there with you right now, back there breathing sand every minute, working our way door to door, death waiting behind every wall and around every corner. I’d do every minute of that hell over again if I could, because if I could do that, I could come back home again in one piece, and that would change everything. I mean if there was only one single moment I could change, I got to be honest with you. As much as I wish I could see that big-toothed grin of yours again, and talk to you again in person the way we used to, I’m sorry to say I’d have to let you be. Because the moment I’d change is that wet-looking morning last summer when Cindy catches me staring out the kitchen window at a dawn sky filled with dark clouds, and she says to me, “You want me to get the girls up?” That’s the moment I’d have to redo, Spence. I’d give her the biggest smile in the world and say, “Yeah, babe. You mind?”
The day after I nearly ripped Donnie’s head off, about ten or so in the morning, somebody knocked on the back door. I was with Emma in the living room, playing under a blanket I’d stretched over the couch and coffee table. She had all of her stuffed animals in there with us, pretending like we were the Wild Thornberrys. Emma was Eliza, of course, so she could talk to all of the animals and tell me what they said.
Anyway, when the knock came on the back door, the first thing I did was go to the front window and look out. I was still wound tight as a guitar string, but instead of being scared I was in full-bore attack mode. It was like my minute with Donnie had flipped a switch or something. But the driveway and the curb were empty. So I told Emma
to sit tight, and I went out through the kitchen to the pantry. That girl Shelley, the one I’d carried in from the rain, was standing outside the door.
I didn’t know whether to open the door or not. If it had been one of the McClaine boys I might have ripped the door off the hinge to get at him, but seeing her instead, and knowing that she had already taken at least one beating because of me, it took all the starch out of me. I felt sleepy and tired all of a sudden and I wanted to walk away from her and everything she represented. It wasn’t like I thought the whole mess was going to miraculously disappear. I knew it wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to have to deal with it anymore.
I opened the wood door and stood there looking at her through the screen.
She said, “I just came to talk.”
“We have nothing to say to each other.”
That was when Phil came out around the corner and slid in front of her. His brother was right behind him.
Phil said, “We have a lot to say to each other. And we’re going to say it now.”
I stepped back to close the door but then Phil punched his fist through the screen and shoved the door back against my hand. “You think a door’s going to keep us out?” he said.
Every muscle in my body went tight and hard. All I wanted was to kick open that screen door and start swinging. But a part of me knew better—knew I couldn’t take both of them empty-handed. And Bubby was grinning like he wanted me to do it. Like he was just waiting for a reason to pull out his knife or a gun.
I reached into my pocket then for my cell phone, but Phil yanked open the screen door and stepped in fast, shoving the wood door all the way open. His brother and Shelley were right behind him. Right away I’m calculating how fast I could run out to the garage and grab Pops’ revolver out of the saddlebag.
He said, “Put the phone away. Unless you want Bubby to go see how little Emma’s doing.”
“You fucking touch my daughter—”
“And what?”
“I swear I’ll fucking kill you.”
“How can you do that when you’re already going to be dead?”
By now that fat Neanderthal Bubby was standing right up there beside Phil, both of them with shit-eating grins on their faces. They’d pushed me back till I was up against the dryer. I figured I could probably take Phil, but both of them together? And me with bruised ribs and no room for moving around? That’s when all the air went out of me.
So I said, “I’ve been planning all along to give it back to you.”
“I wouldn’t think it would take much planning.”
“You threatened my family. That pissed me off.”
“I’m sorry about that, Russell.” He put a hand on my shoulder, which made me stiffen and jerk away. “No hard feelings, okay? Hand over what doesn’t belong to you, and you can go right back to babysitting.”
That was when I knew for sure that Donnie was messed up with them somehow. Who else could’ve known Emma wasn’t in daycare? Cindy might’ve told some people at the bank, but how many of them would know the McClaines? No, it was Donnie for sure. Maybe Janice too.
I told him, “I don’t have it here.”
“Where do you have it?”
“Nowhere I can get it till tonight. After Cindy gets home.”
“Then I guess we need to work out some details,” he said.
I heard little feet on the kitchen linoleum then, so I called out, “Stay there, honey. Go back in the living room, okay?”
Bubby turned to her and said, “Hey, baby girl. You having a tea party today?”
“That was yesterday,” she said.
“I’m sorry I missed it.” And now he went into the kitchen and toward her. “How about showing me what you’re doing today?”
I grabbed Phil by the shirtfront then and got up close in his face. He kept grinning. “You get him the fuck away from her now.”
“I’ll go,” Shelley said. She went into the kitchen then and whispered something to Emma. “Okay!” Emma said.
Pretty soon Bubby came back out into the pantry. He said, “They’re going to play hide-and-seek.”
“See?” Phil asked. “Nothing to worry about. Shelley’s good with kids.”
I was breathing hard. Everything around me was in gray, everything but those brothers. “I can bring it to you tomorrow night,” I said. “But then that’s the end of it. You leave my family alone.”
They kept looking at me. Neither of them was grinning now.
I said, “I made a mistake. I’m sorry. All I want now is to make things right and be done with this.”
After ten seconds or so, Phil smiled again. Then he laid his hand on my shoulder and sort of pulled me toward the kitchen. “Let’s negotiate. Out in the garage.”
With him leading the way, and Bubby breathing down my neck, we went into the kitchen and then to the garage. The man had never been in my house before but he seemed to know it already. All I could think of was that fucking Donnie.
So we go out to the garage and Bubby closes the door behind us. Then he finds the light switch and flips it on. I keep walking until I’m up close to my bike.
Phil says, “Who else knows you took it?”
“Nobody,” I say.
“Your wife?”
“Not even her.”
Bubby says, “Keeping it all for yourself, huh?”
“My little girl was sick. I lost my job. I had no insurance, no money for a doctor.”
“So that gives you the right to take our money?”
“I told you, I’m sorry I did it. I’ve been sorry every day since then.”
Phil nodded and looked at his brother, who sort of shrugged, like he couldn’t care less. Phil said, “You’re going to have to take a beating, you know that, don’t you? For fucking Shelley if nothing else.”
“I never touched her! Except for carrying her in out of the rain after she fell on her back, I never laid a finger on her.”
Bubby came up close to me then, shoved his big belly right up against me. “You’re full of shit, you know that?”
I shoved him away hard, as hard as I could. It made enough room for me to spin around and make a grab for the saddlebag, but that was as far as I got. Phil slammed me facedown until I was bent over the bike seat, my hands jammed up underneath me. Next thing I knew Bubby was yanking me around and driving a fat fist into my chest, knocking me back so hard I fell on my ass on the floor. It was like he’d crushed my chest and collapsed my lungs, that’s how it felt. I started gasping for air but couldn’t suck any in.
He was moving toward me again when Phil told him, “Enough.” Then Phil was kneeling down beside me. He grabbed me around the throat and squeezed so hard I heard myself groan, exactly like I’d done to Donnie the day before. Even with both my hands on his wrist I couldn’t pull free. There wasn’t any strength left in me.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “10:00 p.m.”
I nodded as best I could while choking.
“You remember where you used to work?” he said. “The crushing plant?”
He let up on my throat a little, enough that I could swallow and cough. Then I told him, “Guards maybe.”
“No guards. I already checked that out. You park behind the crusher building and wait for me inside. Capiche?”
I nodded again.
“You come alone. And you better bring every fucking dollar. If you don’t, you’ll be coming home to an empty house. Is that understood?”
I didn’t answer right away because my mind was racing, trying to think of some way out of this, some way to get at the revolver. I’d already spent how much of the money? Hell, I couldn’t even think straight, couldn’t add any of it up. I kept trying to get my feet underneath me but all he had to do was yank me one way or the other and I’d lose my footing.
I guess he didn’t like it that I wasn’t answering so he let go for an instant, then threw me into a chokehold with his forearm locked up against my throat.
“You better understand
,” he said, and then clamped his forearm down hard. It wasn’t long before everything even right in front of my face melted into darkness. I felt like I was turning into some kind of hot black tar, slipping away and oozing over the concrete floor. Then everything went quiet. Quiet and black and deep. And my body sort of evaporated away from me.
I have no idea how long I was out before I heard myself breathing again. Probably not long. But when I came to and got most of my senses back, I was alone. I got up and stumbled back inside the house and went straight to the living room, which was as empty as the pantry and the kitchen.
“Emma!” I called. “Emma, baby, where are you?”
She came out from behind the long drapes on the front window. “Where’s the lady, Daddy?”
I scooped her up in my arms. “She had to go, I guess.”
“She couldn’t find me, could she? I won!”
“You won, baby.”
“Can we play again?”
“Maybe later, okay? Let me hold you for a while.”
I’d tried every way I could not to drag anybody else into this shit storm with me. By next morning I’d decided the best thing to do was to pack up what money there was left, which was most but not all of it, and hand it over to McClaine and promise to pay him back the rest in installments. If I had to take another beating, so be it. In one sense, I knew I deserved it. Then maybe life could get back to something like normal again, without me flinching at every sound and shadow.
If they ended up killing me, then all I’d have to say is that they’d better be smart about it. I’d remind them how many people knew about them harassing us. Hell, even the vice principal at Dani’s school knew a little something about it. I’d tell Phil I left notes with three different people saying I had a late-night business meeting with him. And if he was really smart, he’d take me up on my offer of installment payments, because then he could collect interest on the debt.
I spent the first half of the afternoon convincing myself that my plan would work, then started worrying about how I was going to get out of the house that night without Cindy asking a bunch of questions. I wasn’t all that sure I could even keep my nerves under control. Chances were ten to one she would see right through me.
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