by Meg Jackson
“When has Damon ever made any sense, Cristov?” Kennick said quietly. “But he wouldn’t have told us about the drugs if he didn’t mean he was stopping.”
“Since when are drug addicts so trustworthy?” Cristov sneered.
“Since our brother openly admitted to being one,” Kennick said, turning in his seat. Cristov and Kennick stayed like that a long time, staring at Damon’s closed door, both wondering if the brother they knew would ever emerge again.
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DAMON
Prologue
James Whitley couldn’t believe his luck. He’d always felt like things never went his way, that he’d been dealt every bad hand in the deck. And then, on one sunny morning, as the warm Atlantic tide beat against the sand, he got a call.
The man who called James needed his help. He was broke, he said, when James asked for reasons. He needed some quick cash. Could James help him out? He didn’t care who James got on the other end of the ring, as long as the money was good. James said he’d be happy to help. In fact, he had someone in mind already. The man thanked James and hung up.
James Whitley grinned as he found the second man’s number in his phone. The second man was pleased to hear from him. The second man said definitely – he was still after the same thing he’d been after all those years ago. James Whitley said he’d be needing some extra green to set it all up. The second man asked if he wanted cash or check.
James Whitley called a third man. The third man was just as pleased to hear from James as the second man had been. James was making a lot of people very happy, and in the process he was making himself a tidy sum.
He told the third man he would take his reward in cash – a Moneygram would be fine. And did this third man want to pay a little extra to keep James on as a go-between of sorts, a pair of boots on the ground? The third man said yes, that would be good, as long as James was trustworthy. The third man made sure to explain what would happen to James if he wasn’t trustworthy. James promised he would be. The third man seemed satisfied. He hung up.
James Whitley looked down at his hands and saw himself holding a royal flush. For once, he’d been dealt the good cards, the ones everyone wanted. He gave himself a pat on the back for always having his finger dipped in so many pots. He thought of what his mother always told him; don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. He’d followed her advice, and kept his eyes and ears open. And now it was all paying off. The Atlantic tide beat, beat, beat against the white sand. The sun was shining. It would be a good day for a nice big breakfast, with lots and lots of eggs.
Chris “Roper” Callahan couldn’t believe his luck. How long had he and the sad remains of his crew been searching for this guy? For all intents and purposes, Damon Volanis had dropped off the map. They couldn’t go after him in his town. Kingdom was overrun with cops who knew what they were looking for. Ever since that mess last autumn, they had to give the little town a wide berth. So they’d tried to get him at one of his fights. But it looked like he’d retired early.
And then that little rat-shit tweaker, Jimmy Whitley (who hated to be called Jimmy), had called up, acting like the fox in the henhouse. One of Roper’s connections up and down the Atlantic coast had finally paid off. Damon would fight, down in Miami. Why? Who knew. Who cared. All Roper and his men cared about was giving the gypsy scum what he had coming. No one got away with killing a Steel Dragon. Especially not shit-for-brains, trailer-trash gypsies.
Roper hollered for his men. Their numbers were decimated by that Kingdom bullshit, but there were still ten or twelve good men lingering in Baltimore, and some new recruits; enough make a formidable threat. Now they knew where he’d be, and what he’d be doing. Now, they needed a plan.
Damon Volanis believed far too much in luck to be amazed by his own. And what kind of luck was this, anyway? Not the sort he would wish on anyone else. Luck was just the way the universe made things happen the way they were supposed to happen. Damon hung up the phone and looked at it for a moment before tossing it aside.
How many years? He was 28 now. He’d been in the rings since he was 18. And the reason he’d gone into the rings at all…that had happened when he was 8. Twenty years he’d known this would happen, that it had to happen. And it still didn’t feel like the right time. Now, when he hadn’t fought in five months.
He listened to the sound of children playing outside. Twenty years he’d waited for that call, five months since his last time in the ring, and one year since the gypsies had moved to Kingdom. His older brother was married, his younger brother probably dawdling on his way to engagement. Damon was alone with his secrets. In the drawer beside his bed, there was tape for his knuckles, anesthetics and ointments, protein powders. Out back behind his trailer: his weights, his dummy, sand for the slippery grass. He had everything he needed to fight again.
He’d made a promise to his brothers that his last time would be his last time. But there were things he owed even deeper than a promise kept, between brothers or not. He got up and pulled on a pair of sneakers. There was a gym down the road. That would be a good place to start.
1
“I’m at my car,” Tricia said. “I’m at my car. I’m supposed to go to the police station. I don’t want to go. I’m crying again. I feel stupid. I feel stupid and weak, for what I let Paul do to me. I’m distracted. I don’t see them until it’s far too late. And I…I couldn’t do anything, anyway, I don’t think. There were three of them. Big men.”
Tricia lay on her back across the couch. The words came easy these days. The memories came without feeling. Mostly without feeling, anyway.
“The big one is holding a black thing. I don’t know what it is. Not yet. I back away. My keys are still in the car door. I ask what they want – who they are. But then he’s on me, and I feel the black thing against my side, and then – spectacular, awful pain. Like my blood is made of…razorblades. My teeth hurt from clamping – I don’t think of anything. Can’t think of anything. There’s nothing, then. And that’s better than the pain.”
Tricia’s body tensed, a cringe on her face, from the memory of it. The pain is gone, but the memory isn’t, and the body knows things long after the mind has tried not to know them anymore. The body rarely forgets.
“When I wake up again, we’re somewhere, inside. I can hear them talking. Not a lot. And it’s like – I can hear them, but they’re speaking another language. But I know it’s English. I just can’t understand it. And then, slowly, I do. They’re talking about me – about what they’re going to do to me if…if…”
“If their demands aren’t met?” Sheila, the therapist, eventually said, picking her words carefully. Tricia swallowed hard and nodded.
“They’re going to kill me,” she said. “Shoot me through the head and dump my body in the Delaware River. And I think – well, that’s that. I don’t know what they want. I don’t know why it’s me. But I know – my parents are away. And they’re not rich. So that’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. That’s all I can think. So I start screaming. And that’s when I realize I’m tied up – I can’t move. And I can’t scream, either. The thing – the thing in my mouth, it hurts my cheeks and my lips. Everything at once. That’s how I realize it. I realize everything at once.”
That moment caused another jerk throughout her body, as though she was still struggling against the ropes that kept her wrists and ankles tied together. Her mouth opened in a wide grimace. Her lips had been cut, when they’d examined her later. The ends of her lips were swollen and cut by the rough fabric they’d used to gag her. It took a long time for that to heal.
“They’re unhappy that I’m awake,” she said, continuing. “They say they’re going to take me outside, that they’re going to punish me. And they do, because I can’t stop. I try to stop – try to tell myself that I need to calm down. But I’m going to die, either way I’m going to die, and I’m not…I�
�m not going to go quietly.”
Here, her brow set in a straight, firm line. This was the part of the retelling – the reliving – that hurt the least. Because in that moment, in those moments of struggle, there was courage. There was an acceptance of her vulnerability, and a refusal to accept it, existing side-by-side. She still had strength, then.
“You’re a fighter, right, Tricia?” Sheila prompts. The remembering wasn’t just about facing what had happened. It was about remembering who she was when it happened, and before. That was the hardest part of it, in fact.
“I could be,” Tricia said, the determination fading from her face. “I want to be. But then the pain comes again – buzzing, electric, awful pain. Enough to take it all out of me. I mean -- when I feel the metal against me again, I think they are going to kill me right then. I kind of hope they do. But I wake up. I don’t know how long I was out – I don’t even know how long I’m awake before…hours and hours…”
“Don’t rush,” Sheila guided, her voice soft. “What happened when you did wake up?”
“I’m cold. I’m very, very cold. I think I’m outside, but there’s a wall against my back. I can’t move much – I don’t want to move, anyway, because everything hurts, everything’s cold. Somewhere in my mind I think I deserve the cold. Because they said it was a punishment, and in the dark…and after so long…it feels like it might be right. Like I’m being punished, and I deserve the pain, the cold.”
“But you know you don’t,” Sheila said, her words soft as they float across the room to Tricia’s ears and land like feathers in her brain, registering only in the vaguest sense.
“I know I don’t,” Tricia says, almost repeating her therapist’s statement. “I don’t deserve the pain, I don’t deserve the cold. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Good. Go on, Tricia.”
“Time doesn’t mean anything. At some point, the man – the big man – says to the others to go inside and get something to eat. I’m hungry, too, but not as hungry as I am thirsty, and not as thirsty as I am cold. So I don’t care. He says that if I’m good, he’ll bring me in before the sun goes down. He’s not talking to me. He’s talking to them. I don’t exist. I’m not a real person. They don’t need to talk to me, because I’m just an object.”
Tricia’s brow furrowed as she remembered what came next. For the first few months, she hadn’t been able to remember these things. It was only with repeated hypnosis and time – precious, precarious time – that she could recall the events as they happened, remember how she’d felt, how alone and hurt and scared. Her mind had tried to protect her for a long while. Now, though, she knew the only way out was through those memories.
“I hear them leaving. The barn door – creaks. And then – well, I think I fall asleep a little, or maybe I’m still awake but…then I hear him coming in. The big one yells. He sounds confused. He sounds angry and confused. He screams something and then – then the gunshot. It’s so loud. It’s like hearing the world end. I think I’m dead. I think someone shot me. I’m almost happy for it. I thought it was going to happen anyway so – so sooner the better.”
“But you weren’t the one who was shot,” Sheila prompted when Tricia paused.
“No,” Tricia said. “I’m not the one who was shot. I know it’s not me when I feel his arms around me. That scares me worse than the gunshot, at first. The feeling like suddenly – I don’t know. Feeling trapped in this mountain of warm muscle. But then he starts speaking, and I know him, and I know I’m safe. I feel like my heart is breaking into a million pieces. It’s like – I should be so happy, I should laugh, or something. But instead I just want to…”
Tricia’s voice dropped off again. Trying to put that into words – that feeling that wasn’t a feeling, that sorrow that wasn’t sorrow, that fear that wasn’t fear – it was daunting. Perhaps impossible.
“Want to?” Sheila goaded again.
“…I want to die, again. I mean – I want to just die, there, knowing in that moment I’m safe. Because the future….the rest of it…everything after that moment…I don’t know what will happen. But in that moment I know. So I just want it to end there. I want that last little bit of…peace. I want that to be the last thing I ever have.”
“And do you still feel that way, Tricia? Do you still feel afraid of the future? Do you still feel like you would have been better off dying there, then, in that moment?”
Tricia shook her head. Even in her half-trance, it was fervent.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m glad. I’m glad to be alive. I’m glad to be…here. And I’m glad to be…”
Her words trailed away. A clock ticked.
“Glad to be going home?” Sheila asked.
For a long moment, Tricia didn’t respond. And then she nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Glad to be going home.”
2
The general population of a kumpania, the collection of families and extended families that travelled and lived together, could change from month to month. People came home –wherever home was at the time – and people left, to find their own fortunes, or simply because flying shoes fit them better. Damon Volanis’ kumpania had settled in Kingdom a year ago, made it their home, and welcomed their familia to come and go as the spirit called them. This led to a level, steady, manageable population.
But on a Wednesday in early summer, with the sun bright and warm, the trailer park where the Romani lived was full to bursting, with almost everyone who’d ever been a part of the kumpania arriving by plane, train, or automobile for a very special occasion.
Baba Surry – everyone’s grandmother or surrogate grandmother – was the guest of honor at the very last party she’d ever attend: her funeral.
The Romani that lived in Kingdom eschewed many old traditions. The reason they no longer bore striking resemblance to their dark-skinned, Indian ancestors was because they didn’t believe in arranged marriages or in excluding gaje, non-gypsies, from the gene pool. It was preferable for a Romani to marry a Romani, but love was more important than race, and modern day had made clear the benefits of having a more grab-bag approach to DNA. They didn’t make their money in sideshows, carnivals, fortune tellers, or petty scams; they owned legitimate, well-run businesses (most of the time, at least.)
But some things were too sacred to give up, no matter how ancient the ritual, how dated the practice.
The Volanis family: Kennick, Cristov, and Damon, stood in Baba Surry’s trailer. Kennick, the rom baro, or “big man”, leader, of the kumpania, had stood vigil the previous night with the Surry clan. Candles lighting the main room helped guide Baba Surry’s spirit to the other side; white sheets and wildflowers adorned the walls to cleanse the place where she’d died. She had been the group’s phuri, a sort of matriarch who acted as the feminine counterpart to the rom baro. That title would be passed down, in time, after the mourning period.
Now, the brothers watched in as the closest members of her family came to leave coins in her over-sized casket, already full to brimming with her personal belongings – anything that might be necessary in the other world, included new dresses, old photos, and jewelry. Each of her sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews bent by the casket and whispered to her, telling her their sins so that her spirit might forgive them.
Notably absent was Jenner Surry, one of Baba Surry’s many grandchildren, who was the most in need of absolution from his late grandmother. He wasn’t missed, either. The man had long plotted against the Volanis brothers, thinking that the Surry name should be given a place at the head of the kumpania.
The title of rom baro was, traditionally, an elected one; but the kumpania had trusted in the lead of Volanis men for so long, the election had become more of a formality than anything else. The Volanis men trained their firstborn sons to take up the helm. It was how things were. No one thought it would be better otherwise; except Jenner Surry.
He’d gone so far as to burn down one of their own trailers – whether he
knew that there was a child inside when he did it was a matter of some debate. And then he’d collaborated with a vicious biker gang, the Steel Dragons, to take down the gypsy’s marijuana business. It had resulted in a hell of a lot of trouble for everyone involved – and the kidnapping of Tricia Garland, who wasn’t really involved at all.
Jenner had skipped town after that plan fell apart, and now even his own mother spat on the ground when his name was mentioned. The only people who wanted him were the police; there was a warrant out for his arrest, on counts of aiding and abetting, conspiracy, and arson. Even Baba Surry’s spirit could not have washed his own soul clean.
Soon, the entire gypsy horde would take to the streets of Kingdom, carrying the casket to its final resting place. The trailer park was barely large enough to hold everyone. The three neat rows of trailers, set near the woods, had turned into a helter-skelter crowd of RVs, trucks, sedans and tents as relatives and kin poured in. Coffee and strong liquor passed amongst the mourners, some of whom elected to follow the tradition of not bathing or shaving during the mourning period – a tradition not well understood by the few gaje in attendance.
Kim and Ricky James stood by their men: Kennick and Cristov, respectively. Damon, standing at a slight distance, admired, not for the first time, the poetry of their differences. Kim and Ricky were sisters, but their similarities ended there. Kim was voluptuous, with light auburn hair, deep blue eyes, and freckles that dotted across her nose like constellations. Ricky’s body was long and lean, and her hair was so blonde it almost looked white, while her eyes were so pale blue they could be grey at times. Her porcelain-white skin was clear, like milk.