“He’s just visiting, says he’s by himself.”
The kid was still looking down when she stepped on the porch. She didn’t trust people that couldn’t look her in the eye, but he did it in a way of respect, like he wouldn’t dare challenge her for control. And Annie had plenty of silver hair.
A high school kid looking for a room? Hardly seemed right, but Annie was on her own when she was about the same age. She knew what it was like to scuffle.
She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d seen this kid before, but nothing was catching. “You wait on the front porch,” she said. Drayton sat in the rocking chair without a single word. Annie went inside, but not before looking back and saying, “And don’t be snooping around this farm, you hear? We’ll be out in a minute.”
VII
There was shouting inside the house. Something fell. Bo was explaining. The shouts turned to murmurs. We need the money. That was the trump card. Although Annie was the only one arguing otherwise, even she couldn’t over play that one. They needed money.
Drayton suggested with a thought that Annie forget she’d seen him at the Waffle House, otherwise this would all be too suspicious. He looked innocent enough, but plenty of good predators do. And Drayton was the greatest predator of all. If they knew what he was, there would be no room available, end of discussion. Not like that would matter.
He rocked silently, watching the shadows creep across the yard. The horses grazed, occasionally looking at Drayton. There was something comforting about the scene. He explored his memories to see if he had been there before. He could remember back a hundred years like yesterday, but after that the memories got fuzzy like long-past ghosts of another life, like an old man remembering the thrill of a first kiss. Try that when you’re a thousand years old. Or however old he was.
The screen door smacked against the wall and clapped back in the door frame. Annie carried a big leather book and sat on a porch swing opposite Drayton. She opened the ledger on her lap and tapped her pencil. She bounced the tip off the page with an erratic, nervous beat. “You got a name?”
“Drayton.”
She scribbled in the book. “That’s your birth name?”
“That’s a nickname.”
She slowly flipped the pencil and erased her last entry. “I need your birth name.”
“Drayton will do.”
“You don’t understand, young man. I need your birth name because I’m going to do a background check on you to find out if you’re a psycho. I don’t take kindly to crazy people in my house. Now, I’ll ask one more time.”
Drayton’s birth name was probably the only thing he remembered from the early days. He didn’t want to forget it because someone gave it to him, even if he couldn’t remember where it came from or who gave it to him. He didn’t use it often because, quite frankly, no one cared for foreigners in America these days. Nor did they care for funny names.
“Nassfau.”
Annie scribbled in the book. The pencil remained poised over the page as the silence stretched over long moments. “You’ve got a last name, don’t you?”
“Rauttu,” Drayton said. “Nassfau Rauttu.”
“Let me see an ID.” She looked over her wire glasses at Drayton, sprigs of kinky gray hair around the frames.
“I don’t have identification.”
Annie narrowed her eyes, rethinking the whole thing. Yeah, they needed the money, but what good would it do if he caved her skull in. She had enough people trying to hurt her in her lifetime. Drayton let her look deep into his eyes. She fought the temptation, like everyone did, but soon found herself soaking in his soothing glance. It allowed him the opportunity to see inside her.
She was tough as weathered rawhide, unyielding as an oak. But she was mortal. He detected something all mortals shared in common, something found on battlefields. She was dying and didn’t know it. A tumor in her brain. He took a short whiff. The tumor was small, just forming. She had plenty of time, two years, maybe three, before it would start affecting her memory and balance. It was hard to tell, so many variables. There was no sense in telling her, she was better off living life in this moment than worrying out her fate. And, judging by the wrinkles around her mouth, there was plenty to think about already.
Drayton looked away. Annie blinked quickly, tears forming in her eyes. She composed herself, writing the word slowly.
“Rauttu?” she said. “You Chinese or something?”
“I have some Chinese in me.” Drayton grinned so faintly his lips barely moved. “Drayton’s actually my middle name,” he said. “If you want to write that down.”
“Well Drayton may be a Southern name, but it don’t make you so.” She turned the pencil over, erased the last name and cursed under her breath, adding the middle name. “Nassfau Drayton Rauttu.”
“You can call me Drayton.”
“All right, Drayton. How many nights you want to stay?”
“A week. Maybe longer.”
Annie raised her eyebrows. “What’d you plan on doing here for a week?”
“Rest.”
She looked around the yard, wondering what the hell a teenage-looking kid would do out there for kicks.
“That’ll be $300 with a $100 deposit.” She went back to scribbling in the book. “I don’t take credit cards and I don’t take checks. So if you plan on paying with either then our business here is finished.”
Drayton peeled four bills off a roll of money and placed them on her book. She stopped scribbling, watched him put the roll back in his front pocket. Judging by the thickness, he could rent the room for months. Maybe years.
“Tell me something, Drayton.” She stared at the bills, untouched. “Why are you here?”
“I have business.”
“You dealing drugs?”
“No, ma’am. No drugs.”
“Then what’s a boy like you doing with a wad of cash like that.”
“I’ve invested well.”
“Then what’s your business?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, your hospitality is appreciated. It’s hard to find courtesy in this day and age, you know.”
She watched the bills as if they’d sprout teeth and tear through her faded floral blouse. The ceiling fan made them tremble on the page. She gently placed her hand over them to make sure they didn’t sprout legs, too.
She creased the bills in half and slid them into her pocket. “You have a room for one week, Drayton. If I see anything I don’t like, you will leave my property with no refund. Do we have an agreement?”
“Indeed, we do.”
Annie snapped the book shut. “Come along to see your room.”
He took his time going into the house. No sense in rushing. Delivering Blake Barnes’ message wasn’t about words. He couldn’t stop by and tell them their deadbeat, runaway husband and father says he’s sorry. It wasn’t about that. Drayton had to deliver the message, and sometimes it took awhile to figure out what exactly the message was.
VIII
Drayton followed Annie past crooked pictures with dusty glass and family faces. Annie and her two boys and daughter. The daughter was the oldest, but she’d moved out a year earlier. The youngest boy Drayton had yet to meet. The hallway ended in the kitchen with peeling wallpaper of flowers and stripes and a small table with aluminum legs. Annie was already climbing the steep steps to the right, her footsteps clobbering each tread. At the top, a short hall went left and right, each ending at a door. Annie went left and turned the glass doorknob.
The ceiling inside was slanted. The books on the shelf were bloated from the humidity. Annie asked Drayton about his luggage. He didn’t have any at the moment. She curled her bottom lip, stared, then decided it was an argument she didn’t have the energy for.
“Well, if you get any luggage, you can put it in those drawers.” She pointed at a bureau in the corner with a metal fan on top. “For your information, I don’t do your laundry. If those are the only
clothes you plan on wearing, you’re going to have to wash them yourself. The washing machine is downstairs but the dryer don’t work. In this humidity, it’ll take a day and a half for them to hang dry. I don’t mean no disrespect, but if you start stinking to high heaven, you’ll have to sleep in the barn and that bed cost the same as this one.”
The day had gotten up to one-hundred degrees, but his shirt was still dry. Doesn’t matter, a man can still smell underneath a dry shirt. The how and the why his stink didn’t reach her nostrils didn’t seem to bother her. Wasn’t her problem, really.
“I serve supper at 6:00, but I’m running late today. You’re welcome to make yourself at home up here or wander around the farm, pet the horses or whatever you plan on doing. Riding is off limits. I got an old mare stabled that you can take on the trail, but not until it cools off and not without one of us going with you. And you’ll have to sign a waiver. Understand?”
He nodded. Drayton listened to her descend the stairs. Pots and pans clanged below. She spoke quietly with Bo for some time.
Drayton had been in prison hot boxes in the Middle East cooler than that attic room. He stood at the window, contemplating Blake Barnes’ message. The day moved on and Drayton was still at the window. Annie knocked and told him supper was ready. He politely declined without opening the door, said he would like to rest. Then he watched the sun set. He listened to the house and the years of memories that penetrated the walls.
When night fell, a television muttered from downstairs. Then music. Eventually, it was quiet. There was only the sound of tree frogs. Peace fell over the house. Those inside slept like the dead. Their slumber was deep and filled with dreams. Drayton stood at the window like a sentinel, as still as the night.
When the sun was near and the black sky turned gray, he walked downstairs without a sound, found several boxes of tea in the cabinet. Among them Earl Grey. He prepared a cup and went outside. He sat at a tiny cast iron table on a similar chair, both peeling black paint beneath a sprawling live oak. He savored each sip, watching the sun rise above the trees.
IX
Annie would rather starve than take a risk. She blamed her ex-husband for her conservative nature. Letting the kid in the house, a stranger, was the riskiest thing she’d done since Blake left. Starving is one thing, but letting a serial killer in the house was another. When she saw Drayton on the porch, she had every intention of marching his ass down the road, even if that meant a loaded shotgun. Don’t know what stopped her.
She lay in bed that first night staring at the ceiling wondering if she made a mistake. That floor hadn’t creaked once since she led him to the attic room and those boards whined even when you thought real hard. He must’ve gone right to sleep because it was dead silent. Don’t say dead. Annie wondered if she would sleep at all thinking about it. That money would only last a few weeks. Then what? That boy could be a lifetime of trouble.
She rolled back and forth, thinking the risk just wasn’t worth it. She was about to get out of bed and sit at the foot of the steps, just in case he got any ideas. But sleep rolled on her like a rogue wave.
Annie didn’t own an alarm clock. She woke every morning at 4:00 AM, no matter what time she went to bed. She would lay there for half an hour and pray for her children, then get up to make breakfast. Annie hadn’t been late for the morning in twenty years.
She was late that morning.
The horses were whining. Annie blinked. The sun pierced the room in flat lines through the blinds. The clock read 8:30. She sat up, checked her watch. Still 8:30.
She came storming out of her room pulling on a robe. The house was silent. Annie leaned over the kitchen sink, looked out the window. The horses stretched their necks over the fence, pawing at the ground. They hadn’t been fed.
“Bo!” She fired up the stove. “Time to feed!”
Bo stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. He stared at the clock, pulled on his boots. The back door slammed. The horses were waiting at their stations.
Annie melted butter in the pan. She’d let Young, her youngest son, sleep until breakfast was ready. He was a late sleeper anyhow. Probably slept right through the shouting. She had dreams that night. Dreams. Something about a park and the water. There was a sailboat, too. She could still feel the breeze on her face and smell the ocean.
The butter crackled in the pan. She broke open four eggs and noticed the tea pot was out. It was still warm. Bo walked in a hurry with stainless steel buckets across the backyard. Off to the right, under the largest oak on the property, was the boy. He sat at the iron table with his legs crossed, a teacup on one hand and a saucer in the other. He watched Bo dump buckets into the feedboxes and the horses stuff their heads inside. He sipped his tea elegantly, lifting the cup to his lips with little finger poised outward. She’d never seen anyone drink tea like that, except on television maybe. It was like royalty.
She hated to say it, but until she saw him out there, she’d forgotten about him. And Annie never forgot about anyone when they were on her property. She always said she could smell people on the other side of her twenty acres and that boy slept upstairs while she slept like the dead.
The eggs spattered.
Don’t say dead.
X
Bo woke up late on the second day, too. This time it was after 9:00.
He was thinking he never slept like that before, or dreamed like that, either. Drayton had been there two days and pretty much stayed in his room. Hadn’t come down to eat, piss or nothing. He just drank that tea the other morning and that was it. It should’ve been creepy, but for some reason it wasn’t. Maybe all the sleep Bo was getting just put him in a good mood. Mama certainly was.
The kitchen was empty, too. Except for the tea kettle, the counters and stove hadn’t been used. Mama must’ve been sleeping in, also. That was a world record, her sleeping in again. Since it was Saturday, he didn’t bother waking her for work.
The horses didn’t seem too upset. None were tromping around the pasture. In fact, they were already grazing at the round bale. The little table under the oak was empty. Drayton must’ve been back in his room already. Bo figured that maybe Mama got up and fed. Good moods can do that. He went out to the feed room in the barn and heard the buckets clanging around. It was Drayton, cleaning out the steel feed buckets
Bo pulled a Coke from the tiny fridge under the sink. “’Morning.”
“It is,” Drayton said.
Bo popped the drink and took a sip while Drayton went about cleaning. Shit, if he wanted to kick in around the farm, Bo wasn’t going to stop him. He went out to the barn to start hauling straw and dragging fields. The tractor spit black smoke from the straight pipe pointing out of the front hood. He pulled the long trailer loaded with bales of straw out of the barn and around the first corner of the fence. He sat back in the seat on his first stop and chugged the rest of the Coke and belched louder than the tractor. He twisted the can and crushed it, putting in the small toolbox next to his seat. He noticed a bale had already been thrown out and broken for the horses. When he turned back, Drayton was climbing back on the trailer. He nodded to Bo to go ahead.
Bo did just that. He drove and Drayton bucked bales. They got chores down in half the time.
XI
A black Hanoverian horse came to the fence sniffing at Drayton. His lips flapped and he snorted. His coat was radiant. His eyes fearless. Drayton had ridden many like this one through battlefields. He was a warmblood, his descendents trained for war. A magnificent beast.
Drayton stepped out of the mid-afternoon shade of the live oak and offered his hand to the horse. It snorted and blew warm air from its nostrils.
“His name’s Blackjack.”
Drayton eyed the young boy in the wheelchair that pulled up beside him. The grass was pushed over in tracks leading from the house.
“My mom’s horse,” the boy said.
“Beautiful horse,” Drayton said.
The boy pushed thick glasses up his nose
, held out his hand. “I’m Young.”
Drayton shook his hand, nodding imperceptibly.
“Bet you didn’t know my mama had another son.” Drayton tipped his head. He did, but acted otherwise. “Bet you didn’t know I was in a wheelchair, did you.”
It didn’t take an immortal to know that. A ramp led up to the back door. But Drayton shook his head, nonetheless.
Drayton heard Annie talking to Young at night, heard the rubber treads of his wheels squeak on the hardwood floors. He even sensed Young watching him through the downstairs window, the curtain drawn just enough, when Drayton was outside. Now that he had a good look into the boy’s eyes, he could see he was fifteen, bound to a wheelchair all his life. Drayton sensed the disease that ravaged his immune system, degraded his muscles. In fact, he was supposed to be dead already but was too stubborn to do so.
“You don’t exist,” Young said.
“Pardon me?”
“I’ve been researching you.” Young pulled a laptop from the saddlebag along side the wheelchair and flipped it open. “You don’t exist, at least not by the name Nassfau Rauttu.”
“You can’t afford air conditioning, but you have a laptop and Internet?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, my legs don’t work. There are government programs that take care of me.” He tapped his keys as if case closed. “You either lied about your name or you’re hiding something, I can’t find anyone named Nassfau Drayton Rauttu in the last hundred years.”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“Are you a liar or have I met my match?”
“I’m neither hiding nor lying,” Drayton said. “I don’t exist.”
Young waited for a follow up. When there was none, he pulled a broken radio antenna from the saddlebag and poked Drayton’s leg. “Lie number one. You do exist.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
Young seemed to get off track and told Drayton all the horses names and what their owners were like. He didn’t like half of them because they felt sorry for him. He didn’t usually talk to people, especially strangers. But then the sun tracked further across the sky until there was no more shade where they were standing. Drayton hadn’t said two words. Young was back to the horses when Drayton asked him if he ever rode one. Young said his daddy used to put him on Imelda and walk him around the pasture. Young got quiet after that.
The Drayton Chronicles Page 3
