Kin

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  From then on, the children were made to bathe in scalding hot holy water, then scrubbed mercilessly with steel wool before bed. The diseases that ran rampant in the outside world could be sent to them on the air, he told them, for when sick people breathe, the corruption travels. If one of their own died, they would eat them to preserve and absorb their strengths, as Papa had been taught by the old man he had met and befriended on a logging trail during his adolescent travels. The man had taken him to a cabin in the Appalachians, where he died, but not before imparting his wisdom to the impressionable boy. Eat the flesh and drink the marrow, he’d said, If’n you want to know all I know.

  The children learned, as he had learned, to look upon the Men of the World, the coyotes, as emissaries from Hell who poisoned everything they touched. He had taught them that the very earth such creatures walked upon could turn black underfoot. He supervised their prayers, and often their slumber, periodically checking to see if they were touching themselves or each other. If they did so, even in their sleep, he would haul them from bed and beat them severely, punctuating the blows with quotations from the bible, so they would understand what they had done, and why the punishment was necessary.

  For a year, he withdrew his focus from the outside world and all its dangers to his own house and the potential for evil that hung like a cloud around his kin. Punishment became pain. Transgressions were paid for in flesh. It was the only way. The children grew to fear him as much as he feared God.

  And though he had never admitted it aloud, not even to Momma, he feared Luke, who he had caught in congress with his sister. How much of the poison had she transferred to her brother?

  At night, in the quiet, he sought Momma’s counsel. She was his sole source of comfort in a world that seemed determined to destroy them all. She listened to his concerns, her manner eternally light despite the ever-increasing weight of her flesh, and the first obvious signs that her docility had not made her immune from God’s wrath. She was stricken with aches in her joints, stabbing pains in her chest (which Papa feared might be God’s way of reminding him of the night he had found his faith), and lethargy. Then came the sores, the rashes, and the angry welts across her back, so much like the wounds from a belt.

  “This is what becomes of us if we lie still for too long,” she told him. “I guess God’s tryin’ to make us see that we better not get too content with things. We gotta keep pushin’ ’till we’re as close to His grace as we can get short of bein’ by his side.”

  He’d considered that for a moment, then leaned forward until his lips were pressed against her ear, and “What if I can’t?” he’d whispered, as softly as he could, even though he knew there could be no secrets from the Almighty.

  Momma closed her eyes and shook her head. “Givin’ up’s a sin in itself when you’ve been blessed with His light,” she said. “Now pray with me and forget your weaknesses before you’re made to pay for ’em.”

  But pay for them he had. His daughter was dead, a sinner had escaped them, and Luke had been poisoned. The rest of them had been forced to move, to seek out a man Papa despised in the hope that he would offer them sanctuary.

  * * *

  An hour passed before the front door swung wide and Jeremiah Krall stomped into the cabin. His enormous gut strained against his tattered plaid logging shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing meaty forearms dark with coarse hair. Dirt and blood stained his faded jeans. His large boots were untied and left muddy prints on the floor.

  Papa rose from his seat and nodded in greeting.

  In the dim light from the room’s bare bulb, Krall appraised him as he might a snake, and spat tobacco juice on the floor. His eyes were the color of old bark, and glared from a small clearing in the frenzy of wild dark brown hair that smothered his skull and face.

  When they’d pulled up earlier, Krall had been leaving. He’d scarcely acknowledged them, but nodded at the cabin, which Papa took as an indication that he should wait. Now he hoped he hadn’t misinterpreted the signal.

  “What’s in your truck?” Krall asked, and unslung a burlap sack from his shoulder. The sack was cinched at the neck with dirty cord. It made a dull thump, suggesting weight, as it hit the floor. Blood pooled around the bottom.

  Papa started to speak, but Krall interrupted him.

  “Got your goddamn kids sittin’ out there lookin’ like sledge-hammered sows. Big tarp in the back looks like you got somethin’ wrapped up. You bring me a present?”

  Again, Papa started to speak, but this time he forced himself to wait. Blurting out that Krall’s only remaining connection to the world was dead might not be the best introduction. Not when he considered where he was. The cabin stood in the shadow of Hood Mountain, at least a half a day’s ride to the nearest town. It was remote, and that suited Krall, especially after killing with his bare hands three men who had jokingly called him a fibber when he claimed to have killed a buck that was roughly the same size as himself. As bold as Krall was known to be, the murders alone might not have inspired him to self-imposed exile, but finding out one of the men he’d killed was the brother of a Sheriff did.

  “We need a place to hole up for a while,” Papa said, and regained his seat, figuring that if he appeared relaxed, Krall might do the same.

  He didn’t.

  “This is my place,” he said coldly. “You got your own damn house. Go stay there.”

  Papa knew Krall was not a stupid man, and that he was only being obtuse simply to make what Papa had to say all the more difficult.

  “We can’t,” Papa told him. “There’s been some trouble.”

  “Kinda trouble?”

  “We caught some kids in our woods. Wanted to teach ’em a lesson. They kilt my boy Matt.”

  It was hard to see if the news affected Krall any, given that only his eyes and the bridge of his nose were visible beneath his unkempt hair and above the undergrowth of his beard, but Papa doubted it.

  “Which one’s he?” Krall asked, sounding disinterested.

  It was not a question that required an answer, rather Krall’s way of ensuring Papa knew he was not welcome, no matter who he had lost.

  “You still goin’ on with all that God work?” he asked then. “Preachin’ and huntin’ up people you think’s sinners?”

  “I still believe, yes,” Papa answered, but felt the color rise slightly as he recalled what he had been thinking only a few moments before. “Our work is needed now more than ev—”

  Krall raised a massive hand. “Don’t you go preachin’ to me now. God ain’t here or anywheres around me, and I ain’t one for any of that bible-thumpin’ bullshit.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Why’d you come here?”

  Papa felt flustered. He had rehearsed what he was going to say and how he intended to deliver it, but realized he should have known from the few conversations he’d had with Krall in the past, that the exchange would go entirely Krall’s way. He would hear what he wanted to hear, and that was all there was to it, and if he decided Papa and the boys needed to go, then they’d go. No one ever argued with Krall and came out the better of it.

  “I told you,” he said. “We had some trouble.”

  “I got plenty trouble of my own without you bringin’ more.”

  “They won’t come lookin’ for us here.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Coyotes. They killed my boy, and turned another one against me.”

  Teeth appeared in the dark tangle of beard as Krall smiled. “Weren’t them turned your boy against you, I reckon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means you a goddamn hypocrite, and a loon. And that ain’t the first time I’ve told you that neither, so quit lookin’ surprised. You was standin’ in my woodshed the day I told my sister the same thing. Told her she were makin’ a mistake runnin’ off with the likes of you. Saw it on your face every time you turned up, knew you’d be nothin’ but trouble, and here you are tellin’ me you lost you
r boys on account’ve someone else.” He shook his head. “You ain’t no man,” he said. “You ain’t nothin’. Way I see it, no God in his right mind’d have anythin’ to do with you.”

  The frustration was gone in an instant. Papa grit his teeth. In a fight, he’d die at this man’s hands, but at that moment he felt his temper flaring, heating his skin from the inside out until he was sure it made the air shimmer between them. He wasn’t accustomed to being insulted, but then, there were a lot of things happening lately he wasn’t accustomed to, none of them good. Mama-In-Bed had whispered that it meant the end was coming, the end of times, if only theirs, but to Papa that meant the same thing. He lived for his kin, except when they got themselves poisoned and turned against him. Then the coyotes could tear them asunder for all he cared. Otherwise, he was prepared to kill, and die for them until God reached down and plucked them up to face His judgment, and when that happened, Papa knew they’d be celebrated as angels for the work they’d done on a world gone to hell.

  In years past he might have attempted to convert Krall to his way of thinking, to guide him in painstakingly slow steps into the light. But there was no salvation for a man so full of hate and loathing. Krall was ignorant, stuck in exile but closer than most to the eyes of God and yet he forever stood with his back to Him. Such disdain spoke volumes, and Papa decided the only thing left to do was tell the man the other reason he’d come, and see what happened next.

  He watched as Krall scooped up the burlap sack and jerked open the tie.

  “The tarp you seen before you came in,” Papa said.

  Krall did not look up as he spoke. Instead he frowned and yanked a skinned fox out of the bag by its hind legs. Drops of blood speckled the floor. “What is it if ain’t a present?”

  Papa exhaled slowly, his body tense. “Your sister,” he said.

  -22-

  He didn’t know how long he’d been listening to the men in the street. Occasionally he was able to make out their words, but not enough for him to be able to figure out what could be so important that they would need to gather down there in the cold at this time of night. But although the subject remained a mystery to him, the tone did not. Someone among them was angry, and when Pete finally tired of listening and returned to his mattress of cushions on the floor, that anger culminated in a gunshot that rattled the windows and startled a cry out of him.

  Immediately he was on his feet and back at the window but his frightened breath occluded his view. Nevertheless he got the impression of scattering bodies as the car once more rumbled to life. The echo of the shot had not yet faded before he heard the bedroom door open behind him.

  “Wayne, that you?”

  Pete turned and saw Louise standing in the doorway of her room, the light from the streetlamps showing the concern etched on her face.

  “No,” he told her. “It’s me.”

  “Pete. Did you hear that shot? Where’s Wayne?”

  He nodded. “He told me to tell you he went for cigarettes.”

  She brushed past him and hurried to the window. Despite his curiosity, he stayed where he was, watching as she blocked out the light and rubbed the ghosts of his breath from the glass.

  “There’s someone down there,” she said, a note of panic making her voice high and tremulous. “I think someone’s been shot.”

  Pete stood dumb, waiting for whatever was to happen next. Louise turned and looked at him, wringing her hands together. In her haste she hadn’t tied the robe properly, and now it slid open. Though she was now backlit by the window and therefore all but cloaked in shadow, Pete averted his eyes anyway.

  “When did he leave?”

  “I dunno,” he told her. “Maybe an hour ago. Your robe’s come opened.”

  She seemed to take a minute to register this, then cursed and when next he looked, she’d cinched it tight around herself and was rushing toward him. “I want you to call 911. There’s a phone in the bedroom. Can you do that for me?”

  He nodded, because he was knew he was supposed to, but he had never had to call 911 before and wasn’t entirely sure what it might entail beyond dialing the numbers.

  “Tell them someone’s been shot at 663 Harrison Avenue. Can you remember that?”

  He watched her dig her feet into slippers. “Yes.”

  “Good. Give me your coat.”

  “My coat?”

  “Yes, I need it. Quickly.”

  “You ain’t goin’ down there, are you?”

  “Pete…”

  He did as she asked and handed it over.

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “No.” Shrugging on his jacket, she hurried to the door. “Stay here,” she said without looking back, then jerked open the door of the apartment.

  A shadow stepped in front of her, blocking her path, but she was still looking back at Pete and hadn’t yet noticed.

  The boy froze, felt a word of warning rush up his throat but it died before it hit the air, drowned out by Louise’s scream as the man pushed his way into the apartment and slammed the door shut behind him.

  “Please…don’t…” Louise said, her voice brittle with panic.

  “Shut your goddamn mouth,” the man said, and as Pete’s eyes adjusted, he could see that his initial assumption that it was Wayne he was looking at, perhaps angry because of something the men down in the street had said to him, was wrong. This man was shorter, thinner, and his voice higher in pitch than Wayne’s had been. Also, though Pete hadn’t studied Wayne too closely, he was sure he hadn’t had a gun.

  “Red,” Louise said, cinching her robe even tighter and hugging herself. “Wayne ain’t here.”

  Red looked furtively around the darkened apartment, as if following the path of an agitated bird. “I know he ain’t,” he said tersely. “Your boy’s down there in the street with a big hole in his chest.

  Louise said nothing, but started to shake her head.

  Pete stood rooted to the spot with fear. He was unable to register what he’d just heard. Wayne, the man who had taken his mother away from him had gone out to buy cigarettes, or to talk to those men, and now he was lying down there shot? He couldn’t quite understand how or why that had happened, and wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it if it was true. His attention was fixed on the man with the gun, and Louise, who looked terrified.

  “The fuck’s this?” the gunman said, jerking the weapon in Pete’s direction.

  Louise didn’t answer.

  “The fuck’re you?” he asked again, looking at Pete.

  “I… Louise is my second Mom.”

  “Dayum,” said Red, and raised the hand holding the gun to chuckle into his wrist before leveling it at Pete. “You think you’re some kind of hero? You thinkin’ about messin’ my shit up in here?”

  Pete shook his head. “No, sir.”

  Red smiled, his teeth gleaming a dull metallic color in the gloom. “That’s right. Yes sir. You don’t fuck with me, we all be cool, geddit?”

  “Why are you doin’ this?” Louise asked between sobs. Her head was lowered. “Why are you here?”

  Red turned his attention back to her. “Take a seat. You and the kid. Sit down on that sofa and get comfortable. Wayne’s got somethin’ I need. Once I get it, I’ll be on my way, and then you can go back to playin’ house with my little homeboy here.”

  Louise didn’t move.

  “Hey babe?” Red said, leaning in close.

  Slowly she raised her head to look at him.

  “Do what I fuckin’ tell you to do,” he said, and in a flash, his hand was in her hair. He pulled hard and sent her sprawling across the arm of the couch. Instinctively, Pete made to move forward, whether to help her or tackle the man who had hurt her, he wasn’t sure. His insides were on fire, his whole body quaking with the need to do something. And that something was fueled by anger at what he had just seen.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he told Red. “Don’t you put your hands on her again.”

  Red smiled and r
aised his hands. “Easy there, Shaft. Just helpin’ her out is all. She don’t hear too good. You know how bitches are. All mouth.”

  “Don’t touch her,” Pete said again. “She ain’t done nothin’ to you.”

  “Not yet,” Red said, and began to move toward where Pete still stood fists clenched by his sides, trembling. “But who knows where the night might lead.”

  As the man approached him, Pete tensed himself for the same pain he had managed to forgive when it came from the fists of his father, and was surprised when the man veered away and stopped before the television set.

  “Let’s see what’s on,” Red said, and took a step back. Pete’s eyes fell to the man’s gun, which was now close enough for him to grab if he wanted to. But as if sensing his intention, the man looked over his shoulder at him. “Go help your Momma, kid, or I’ll put so many holes in you you’ll look like a salt shaker.”

  Pete did as he was told. He sat down on the couch and watched as the man reared back and launched a kick at the TV screen. It toppled from its stand but did not shatter. Red kicked it again, harder this time, and the glass exploded under his heel with a dull whump. Blue sparks sizzled and hissed. A thin wreath of smoke rose from the exposed hole in the front of the TV.

  From his pocket, Red produced a small pen-sized object, thumbed it and a thin ray of light pierced the smoke. Despite his fear and anger, Pete was curious. He’d never seen such a small flashlight before, and immediately felt the urge to ask the man to let him see it. An urge he quickly repressed. Instead, he put his hand on Louise’s back as she straightened and sat on the arm of the couch. She was sniffling and rubbing her nose. He wanted to tell her it was going to be all right, that any minute now the man would leave them alone, but he wasn’t sure that was true, and didn’t want to lie. So he said nothing, and watched as the man fished something out of the guts of the TV.