We Begin at the End

by Chris Whitaker

  “I thought you were pulling the midnight shift tonight?” Duchess said.

  Star had been cleaning offices over in Bitterwater.

  “They … I didn’t show last night so they told me not to come back. Don’t worry about it. I can tend bar at Darke’s place, that’s probably why he’s over.”

  “I don’t like you working there.”

  Star smiled, then held up the business card again like it was proof of something. “Our luck is turning.”

  Duchess scooped up her brother. He was light, thin legs and arms, his hair getting long but she could not afford to take him to Joe Rogers on Main, where the other boys went. She was glad he was too small to notice, the other kids too, it would change soon enough, she worried about that.

  Their shared bedroom, posters she’d hung, science and planets, he would be the smart one. One book on the shelf, Max all hungry and wild, but the end, that’s what Robin loved, because the supper showed Max was cared for. She borrowed it from the small library in Salinas, renewed it every other week, two miles each way on her bicycle.

  Outside she heard talk. Darke owned the house, Star could not afford the rent. Duchess was old enough to know what that meant, young enough to keep from understanding it.

  Her mind ran to her schoolwork, the shit she’d be in if she didn’t complete it. She couldn’t get detention, there’d be no one to collect Robin. Star could not be trusted.

  She made the decision to doze till sunrise and get on it early. She parted the drapes. The street slept, across was Milton’s house, the porch light burned all night, moths gathered and fluttered. She saw a fox, graceful as it left light for the shadows. And then, by Brandon Rock’s house, she saw a man, and he was watching her window. He could not see her, the way she stood, back just enough. He was tall, not like Darke, but still tall. Cropped hair, stooped shoulders, like pride had slid right from him.

  She lay back in her spot.

  And then, as her eyes grew heavy, she heard a scream.

  Her mother’s scream.

  She moved from the room with practiced care, a girl used to the terrors of night, to a mother who courted the worst of men. Behind her she closed the door, he would sleep, even if he got up he would not remember. He never remembered.

  She heard Darke’s voice, steady, like always.

  “Calm down.”

  She watched through the door, the edge, the room cut into a slice of hell, the lamp on its side, throwing shade over her mother, who lay on the rug. Darke watched her intently, like she was a wild creature he’d just sedated. He was too big, too big for the chair and the small house and too big to take down.

  Duchess knew what to do, which boards made noise, and she moved along the hallway to the kitchen. She would not call 911, there would be a record. As she dialed Walk’s cell she heard the noise and turned too late, and then Darke took the receiver from her.

  She dug her nails into his hand and clawed until she felt him bleed. He guided her from the kitchen, his hand firm on her shoulder. She scrabbled, knocked the side table down, a photo of Robin came to rest by her eyes, his first day of kindergarten.

  Above her Darke stood. “I won’t hurt you, so don’t call the cops on me.” Voice so deep it was almost inhuman. She had heard stories about him, just snippets, that a man cut in front of him on Pensacola and Darke pulled him out of his car and stamped his face to mush. And that he did it with a calm that held bystanders mesmerized.

  He watched her, like he always did. He studied her face, hair, eyes, mouth. Taking in the detail, making her shiver.

  She glared up at him, fierce, small nose twisted into a snarl. “I am the outlaw, Duchess Day Radley, and you are the woman beater, Dickie Darke.”

  She scooted back, her head to the door. Above the streetlight fell through the glass, bathing her in orange as she watched her mother scream and yell and run at Darke.

  She wouldn’t rise and help, she knew not to do that. Instead she stood when she saw the shape through the glass.

  Behind, her mother swung fists, Darke gripped her hands and tried to keep them level.

  Duchess made her decision quickly; whatever was outside could be no worse than what was within. She unlatched the door and looked up high into the man’s face. She moved aside and he passed, grabbed hold of Darke and they struggled. He landed one punch, caught Darke on the side of the head.

  Darke did not flinch, saw who it was and stopped dead, stared, calm enough as he weighed options. He was much bigger, broader, but the other man looked like he burned with it, that need to fight.

  Darke fished keys from his pocket, unhurried, and walked from the house. The man followed him out, Duchess behind.

  She watched the Escalade till the lights faded from view.

  The man turned and looked at her. And then past her, where Star stood behind, on the old porch, breathless.

  “Come on, Duchess.”

  Duchess said nothing, just followed her mother into the house, looking back once, where the man stayed, like he’d been sent there to guard her.

  In the melee his shirt had been torn, and it was as the moon caught him she saw it. The crisscross of scars that covered him, raised and angry and fresh.

  6

  THE TIREDNESS RAN OVER HER, uncontended, she let it, labored steps and breaths and burning eyes, ears full of smothered sounds at times so distant she did not react.

  She felt the small tug on her hand, the face of her brother, earnest, his night was spent in dreams.

  “Are you alright?” he worried.

  Duchess carried his bag and hers. A bruise on her forearm, where she’d fallen. In her bag was her paper, half done, her family tree. Her grades were middling, she knew to keep them that way. She did not cut anymore, tried not to get in shit, she could not risk any kind of involvement from Star. Parents’ evenings she would make the excuse, My mother has work, you know how it is. She ate alone, scared in case the other kids saw what she’d made. Sometimes just buttered bread, so stale it could be snapped. Some had it worse, she knew that, just did not wish to join them.

  “I slept on your bed, you kept kicking me in the night,” Duchess said.

  “Sorry. I thought I heard noises. Maybe I was dreaming.”

  She watched him run ahead a little, into the neighbor’s front yard, where he found a long stick and brought it back, like a dog. He held it out and used it as a cane, pretending he was an old man till she laughed.

  And then the front door opened. Brandon Rock, he tended his Mustang with the kind of attention Star said he’d have been better showing his ex-wife.

  He wore a Letterman jacket, so faded and tight the sleeves stopped mid forearm. He glared at Robin. “You stay away from the car.”

  “He didn’t go near it.”

  Brandon crossed the grass and stood close to her. “You know what’s under that cover?” He motioned toward the car, the blue tarp wrapped it tight. Each night she watched Brandon put it to bed like a firstborn.

  “My mother said it’s a penis extension.”

  She saw his cheeks flush.

  “It’s a ’67 Mustang.”

  “Sixty-seven, same year that jacket was made.”

  “That’s my number. Ask your mother about me. All-state. Used to call me the bull rush.”

  “The ball rash?”

  Robin walked back over and grabbed her hand. She felt Brandon watching her the whole way up the street.

  “What’s he so mad about? I didn’t go near the Mustang.”

  “He’s just pissed because he wanted to date Mom and she blew him off.”

  “Did Darke stop by last night?”

  Ahead there was sunlight, shutters up and shopkeepers readying.

  “I didn’t hear.”

  Duchess preferred Cape Haven in winter, where honesty stripped away the veneer and left a town like the rest. She suffered the summer, long and beautiful and ugly.

  She saw Cassidy Evans and her friends sitting outside Rosie’s, short skirts and
tanned legs, tousling their hair and pouting at each other.

  “Let’s go down Vermont,” Robin said, and she let him lead her, away from Main and the girls that would laugh. “What’ll we do this summer?”

  “Same thing we always do. Hang out, go to the beach.”

  “Oh.”

  He kept his eyes down. “Noah is going to Disney. And Mason, he’s going to Hawaii.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll find something for us.”

  Robin ran over to the trees by Fordham. She watched him part the willow and move beneath, he would try and climb the low branch.

  “Morning.”

  Duchess turned, she had been too tired to hear the cruiser, drifted too far to notice Walk pull up beside.

  She stopped a minute and he killed the engine, took off his sunglasses and watched her too close.

  “Everything alright?”

  “Sure.” She blinked away Darke’s hand, her mother’s scream.

  Walk let it hang there, fiddled with his radio and drummed the door. “Last night, all okay?”

  He always fucking knew. “I just said, didn’t I.”

  He smiled then. He never rode her about anything at all. He watched out, but Duchess knew sometimes adults thought watching out meant doing shit that’d lead to the kind of consequences that rippled far from them.

  “Alright,” he said.

  His hand shook, thumb and index finger meeting over and over.

  He clocked her noticing and pulled it into the cruiser. She wondered how much he drank.

  “You know you can talk to me, Duchess.”

  She felt too tired for it, his fat, kind face and loaded eyes. He was soft, jelly, pudding. Soft smile, soft body, soft way of looking at her world. She had no use for soft.

  When they got to school she saw Robin into kindergarten and then waved to Miss Dolores and turned. Last days of school, she needed to keep low, but the paper was a problem, her family tree would get her into shit. She didn’t miss assignments. Her stomach hurt and she placed a hand there, feeling the knot all tight like something bad was coming. She couldn’t stand before the class, say she didn’t know who her father was. She could not do that.

  In the halls she found her locker, tried to smile at the girl beside but got nothing back. It had been like that a long time, like the other kids knew, all she was, spent, responsibility and consequence, no time for what they wanted in a friend.

  In class she took her seat, middle, by the window with a view out over the field. A cluster of birds tilled the dirt.

  She thought of Robin, who’d collect him if she got detention. There was no one. No one. She swallowed a lump, her eyes hot. She did not cry.

  The door opened, and it wasn’t Mr. Lewis. An old lady shuffled in, holding a Styrofoam cup, steam lines, coffee, glasses hung from string. A substitute teacher.

  Duchess slumped on the desk when the lady told them to get out their text books and have a little quiet time.

  * * *

  Walk found him on the lot, vacant now, the Fairlawn house little more than rubble. Men cleared the site, making it safe, diggers moved wood and slate and loaded trucks ready to cart the memory away.

  Darke watched them, his presence alone enough to see them pick up the pace. When he saw Walk he straightened up a little, and Walk couldn’t help but take a step back.

  “Nice day out here. Leah said you called the station. Trouble at the club again?”

  “No.”

  No small talk, no matter how hard Walk tried. It was not possible to get the man to say more than absolutely, painfully, necessary.

  Walk tucked a shaking hand into his pocket. “So?”

  Darke pointed to the house behind. “I own that place.”

  The small home behind, peeling shutters and rotting porch, an effort to keep it but it looked about ready to be pulled down and replaced.

  “That’s Dee Lane’s place.” Walk saw her standing by the window. He waved a hand but she stared straight past him, the water now there, the million-dollar view opening up in a callous breath of nature.

  “She rents it. She won’t leave. I served the papers in time.”

  “I’ll talk with her. You know she’s lived there a long time.”

  Nothing.

  “And she has the girls.”

  Darke turned away, toward the sky, maybe something finally landing.

  Walk took the opportunity to appraise him. Black suit. Simple watch wrapped around a wrist as thick as Walk’s ankle. Walk wondered what he benched, guessed maybe a family car.

  “What will you do with it now, the house?”

  “Build.”

  “You applied for a permit?” Walk monitored applications, objected to the change each and every time. “I heard there was a little trouble last night. The Radley house.”

  Darke just stared.

  Walk smiled. “Small town.”

  “Not for much longer. Did you speak to Vincent King again?”

  “He said … I mean he’s just got out, so at the current time …”

  “You can say it.”

  Walk coughed. “He said to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  Darke, his face a mask of sadness or maybe just disappointment. He cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshot. Walk could only imagine the damage he could do with his size eighteen boots.

  Walk moved on, up the site, broken ground, men at their machines, cigarettes hanging and eyes squinting toward the sun.

  “Chief Walker.”

  Walk turned back.

  “Miss Lane can take another week. I have a storage place. If she’s got anything tell her to leave it out front, I’ll have it collected and kept. No charge.”

  “That’s good of you.”

  In Dee’s yard was a small deck and the kind of neat border of flowers that spoke of pride of place, no matter how small that place was. He’d known her twenty years, each of them she’d spent in the home on Fortuna Avenue. She’d been married, till her husband fucked around and left her with the bills and two kids to bring up.

  Dee met him at the screen door. “I should fucking murder him.” She was small, maybe five-one, attractive in a hard way, like the past years had gunned down the person she had once been. Her against Darke, mismatch didn’t come close.

  “I can find you someplace to—”

  “Fuck off, Walk.”

  “Is Darke right? Is it today?”

  “It’s today, doesn’t make him right though. Three years I rented this place from him, after he took on the mortgage … dealt with the bank. Then the Fairview house fell, opened up my view and I get this in the mail.” She fished through a stack of papers and thrust the letter at him.

  He read it carefully. “I’m real sorry. Can you talk to someone?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I don’t think, legally …”

  “He told me I could stay here.”

  Walk read the letter again, then the notice papers. “I can help you box things. The girls, do they know?”

  Dee closed her eyes, opened them to tears and shook her head. Olivia and Molly, sixteen and eight.

  “Darke said you can take another week.”

  Dee took a breath then. “You know we dated once … after Jack.”

  Walk knew.

  “I thought … I mean Darke, he’s nice-looking, but he’s a fucking freak, Walk. There’s something missing. I’m not even sure what it is, there’s just a coldness to that man. Like a robot. And he wouldn’t touch me.”

  Walk frowned.

  “You know what that means.”

  He felt his cheeks burn.

  “I’m not desperate or nothing, but you date five or six times and it’s natural. But not with him. There’s nothing natural about Dickie Darke.”

  Seeing boxes in the front yard, he moved to fetch them in but she told him to leave them. “It’s all trash. I started boxing up my life this morning. And you know what I realized?”

/>   She cried, no noise or sobbing, just the steady fall of tears.

  “I failed them, Walk.”

  He went to speak but she held up her hand, so close to breaking. “I failed my girls. I’ve got no home for them now. I’ve got nothing.”

  * * *

  That night when Robin and her mother were sleeping she climbed from her bedroom window and wheeled her bicycle from the house.

  Dusk, blue day broke down, trash cans out, the smell of barbeque. Duchess was hungry, never quite enough to fill her. She made sure Robin ate all he could.

  She turned onto Mayer, the low hill falling away, letting the bike coast, streamers on one side. She wore shorts and no helmet, her top zipped and sandals on her feet.

  She slowed at the turn for Sunset Road.

  The King house had always been her favorite, the way it stood, part-ruin, flipping off the surround.

  She saw him straight off.

  The garage door was up, the man on a ladder, gently removing slate. He’d stripped half, a roll of tar paper lay, tools like hammers and picks and a wheelbarrow full of dry and dusty rock. He had a lamp and it shed just enough light.

  She’d seen photos of Sissy, they were the same kind of girl, light hair and eyes and freckles atop small noses.

  She crossed slowly, legs out, the saddle hurting, balancing this way and that, one foot pushing.

  “You were at my house.”

  He turned. “I’m Vincent.”

  “I know that.”

  “I once knew your mother.”

  “I know that too.”

  He smiled then, not real, maybe like it was called for, like he was learning to be something again. She did not smile back.

  “Is your mother alright?”

  “She’s always alright.”

  “How about you?”

  “You don’t need to ask that. I’m an outlaw.”

  “Should I be worried? Outlaws are bad, right?”

  “Wild Bill Hickok killed two men before he became sheriff. Maybe I’ll straighten out one day, maybe I won’t.”

  She wheeled a little closer. He was sweaty, his T-shirt dark at the chest and beneath the arms. Above the garage was an old hoop, the net gone, she wondered if he remembered playing, if he remembered anything about before.