The Drayton Chronicles

by Bertauski, Tony

  He spun the chair around, looked over his shoulder to make sure Drayton wasn’t looking. Young typed loudly. He looked over his shoulder once or twice, as if comparing Drayton’s face to a picture. Young smacked the keys then abruptly snapped the laptop shut. He let go a long frustrated breath. “I accept the challenge.”

  Drayton raised his eyebrows.

  “You exist, therefore you’re out there. I’ll find out who you really are.”

  “Very well.”

  Young wheeled over to the ramp that led to the back door. He stopped in the doorway, pointed two fingers at his own eyes and then at Drayton.

  A smile touched Drayton’s lips.

  XII

  “You invite that boy to supper,” Mama told Bo after watching him help with the straw and drag the fields. Then they spent the next day mending fences. Except for a pot of tea on the stove every morning, they hadn’t seen him eat a thing. “Don’t take no for an answer,” she said.

  But when Bo tapped on the bedroom door, Drayton spoke without opening it. “Pass along my regrets,” he said. “I’m a bit tired this evening and would like to retire.”

  He didn’t look tired when they were working. Bo had soaked through two shirts finishing that fence and Drayton had yet to sweat. Not sure what kind of a person works in heat like that and doesn’t sweat. Must’ve been some sort of deformity, no sweat glands or something.

  Later that night, a boarder called. She forgot her camera in the round pen. She’d been filming that day and asked if Bo could bring it in so it didn’t get rained on. He broke away from the Braves game and found the camera hanging from the post. He admired the sleek design, the way the digital panel flipped out. He turned it on, switched it to night mode and panned around the pasture while he walked back to the house. He zoomed in on the kitchen window where Mama was cleaning up, then swooped toward the second floor. Drayton was standing at the window.

  Bo looked up from the camera. The window was empty. He had to be imagining things. Besides, the floor hadn’t creaked once since he retired. Bo didn’t want to make a big fuss out of it. As long as Drayton helped with chores and paid his mama, he could stare out that window until he passed out. He went back to the Braves game. Forgot all about it.

  XIII

  On the seventh morning, Drayton watched the sun come up from his table as he did the previous six. He took careful sips, savoring the aroma of Earl Grey, even if it was old and stale. It was still a gentleman’s drink.

  But his time as a gentleman was drawing to a close. He sensed a resolution to Blake Barnes’ request was near. He was enjoying his time on the farm; the scent of mowed grass, the horse feed and manure was refreshing. The hard work was satisfying and the family needed the extra pair of hands. But that wasn’t what he had come to do. He would like to stay much longer, but it was no place to be when the hunger returned. Certainly not around the family.

  Perhaps he would stay a bit longer if the opportunity presented itself. But that, also, he sensed would not happen. Yes, he would have to leave the farm soon. The ache was beginning to gnaw at him. It was a hollow pain, a yearning that was ancient. One might call it hunger, but it had nothing to do with satiating an appetite. It had more to do with his existence. The longer he denied the ache, the hollower he became. He did not fear the pain that came with it, for Drayton learned to deal with physical pain centuries ago. What Drayton feared was the instinctual reactions that came with it. His desire to live, to exist, was innate. Over that, he had no control. And when the ache became strong enough, he had no control at all. A gentleman, he was not.

  Still, there was time. And the resolution was near.

  XIV

  Hal Towgard was a man of his word. It was touching one-hundred degrees for the seventh fucking day in a row. He hated doing business when it was that hot. Hell, half of Charleston hated doing anything when it was that hot. They might be in the South, but contrary to satirists, they weren’t stupid. He never once fucked his sister, nor did he know anyone who had (fucked their own sister, that is). They weren’t inbred, they didn’t own slaves nor did they all fly a Confederate flag. Hell, if they thought the South was so goddamn stupid, how could anyone explain all the presidents of the United States coming from the South. (Forget Jimmy Carter, he was a dumbass.)

  No, Hal hated doing business when it was hot enough to boil shrimp on a tin roof, but he had business to attend and business was his word. Cockroaches were a part of the Lowcountry. Sometimes you just learned to live with them, other times you had to grind them under foot. Snap, crackle, pop.

  His pits were soaked before he got in the Chevy Silverado, squeezing behind the steering wheel. He tongued his mustache then wiped his bald head with a handkerchief and shifted ten ways to China trying to squeeze the hanky back in his pocket.

  Aaron stepped in the garage talking on his cell. The little dumbass didn’t close the door all the way. Hal could feel the meter spin as cold air was sucked out his house. He pushed a button, rolled the passenger window down.

  “Close the fucking door.”

  Aaron took his sweet ass time doing it, that cell attached to the side of his head. He damn near stopped on the last step. Talking. Hal punched the horn. It echoed inside the garage. Aaron swung his foot off the last step with sweet ass luxury. Hal was about to go through the windshield. Hal Towgard, waiting on his son. When Aaron pulled open the passenger door, Hal tore the cell off his head and rifled it against the wall. It dented the sheetrock and skittered beneath the truck.

  “Get in the back,” Hal said.

  Aaron held an empty hand to his face. Rage boiled under his blank expression, flickering past his eyes. He pushed it down – all of it – and slid onto the back bench. Hal adjusted the rearview mirror and watched the boy. One sign of defiance and he’d dent the sheetrock with his head. Hal backed out of the garage and something crunched under his tire. Aaron slunk in the corner looking out the window. He kept it pushed down, he did. Kid wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

  People didn’t understand that politics is politics. It was no different no matter where you were. Washington. New York. The country roads outside Charleston, South Cackalacky. It was all about control. People needed to be controlled. They craved control and, thankfully, there were people like Hal Towgard to give it to them. There were different ways to do it. The trick was finding what worked. Aaron dared a glance in his father’s direction, slunk lower in the seat and stared hollow out the window.

  Fifteen minutes later, Hal turned down the last country road. One of his tenants needed a Come-to-Jesus talk. A cockroach problem was brewing and he liked to stay ahead of things. He turned onto the long winding drive and eventually down a wooded driveway. Hal pulled next to Annie’s piece of shit car and gunned the accelerator. He didn’t honk. He didn’t need to. People knew when Hal Towgard arrived. They felt it in their bones. And if they didn’t…

  Snap, crackle, pop.

  XV

  A truck eased up to the house. Bo stopped measuring beet pulp in the feed room and looked out the window. He passed the steel bucket to Drayton without a word. A man climbed out of the brand new Chevy, his belly covering half his belt buckle.

  The front door rattled and Annie was down the steps.

  “I come to check on ya’ll.” Hal wiped his head with a handkerchief and tongued his mustache with the tip of his tongue. “Aaron said he got in trouble over here and I wanted to make sure no one was hurt.”

  “No trouble, Hal,” Annie said. “You can move along now.”

  “You got company, Annie?” Hal looked past Bo toward the feed room.

  Drayton stood in the doorway, looking at the devil Blake Barnes left behind. Tell them I’m sorry. For leaving? Or to fend for themselves?

  “None of this is your business, Hal. Kindly get your truck off my property.”

  “Annie.” Hal worked his lips as if chewing on which words to spit. “I’ll get off my goddamned property when I’m good and goddamned ready.”

&nbs
p; “This ain’t your property as long as I make payments.”

  “And if one of those payments were to… disappear.” He twiddled his porky fingers. “I’m letting you live here, Annie, we both know that.”

  Annie hands worked at her sides, opening and closing.

  Hal hiked up his belt, shifted his weight like he had to fart. He plucked a strand of foxtail from the ground and minced it between his front teeth. He took a deep breath, looked into the trees as if to tell God to turn down the thermostat. He twisted the foxtail between his fingers. Bo stepped back and Hal kept walking, would’ve knocked right into him had he not.

  “Two days ago my boy comes home with your check and a load of shit in his pants.” Hal looked down on Annie, the foxtail dangling toward her nose. “Now what do ya’ll know about that?”

  “He-he-he was pushing me down in the road, Mr. Towgard,” Bo said. “Aaron came to pick up the check and wanted to fight.”

  “Did you fight him?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t want to fight, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “You saying my boy shit his pants for fun?”

  “That’s enough, Hal!” Annie squeezed between Bo and him. “Your boy makes plenty of trouble and if he got a little back, he had it coming.”

  “Your mama fight your fights for you, boy?” Hal swung an open hand at Bo. Annie caught his forearm with both hands and it almost knocked her over. Bo was huffing, squeezing fists at his side. Annie shoved at Hal but his massive frame didn’t budge.

  “Don’t start making threats, Hal.”

  “I’m not making a threat, I’m laying down the rules.”

  “What do you want?”

  He lugged himself back to the truck after glaring at the two for a good several hot seconds, laughing as he went. “I’m making sure ya’ll are safe. I’m making sure no one gets hurt. My job is to stop trouble before it happens, even if I have to make a little trouble to do it.” He pointed at the feed room. “Boy! Come here.”

  Drayton did not respond. He observed the moment, then casually pushed off the doorframe and started across the grass. He walked like a person with all the time in the world. A person that had no beginning. That had no end. Just walking. Bahiagrass seed stalks whipped his legs, but his pace was so casual it seemed like space was growing.

  Hal’s tongue ran back and forth along his mustache. When he could wait no more, he took the last two steps. Drayton stopped before they collided.

  “You from around here, boy?”

  Drayton kept his eyes cast down.

  Hal moved closer, his voice rattled deeply. “Here in the South we have manners, son. When an adult speaks, you answer ‘yes, sir’. So let’s try this again. You from around here?”

  There was no bitterness or edge in Drayton’s voice. He simply said, “No, sir.”

  “My boy tells me you were interfering with his business a few days back. Now boys will be boys, son, that’s a fact. But you got no business in my business, you understand? I forgive once, but cross me again, and you’ll see a real monster, son. One with teeth, claws and shitload of guns. One that eats everything on the farm until there’s nothing left. Horses, included. You understand what I’m saying?”

  Drayton didn’t respond.

  Hal backed up a step, his hard eyes bearing down. “Understand, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lift your eyes, boy, and behave like a man. Look me in the eyes and answer the question again.”

  Drayton focused on the third roll of Hal’s neck, the red bumps where he shaved. Hal’s heart pulsed beneath the collared shirt sticking to his chest. Drayton closed his eyes, took a deep breath and breathed in the man’s foul essence, tasted the pain that hid deep inside. His forgotten memories were an iron maiden. His anger encased him like a tomb.

  Hal’s father beat him. He felt his father’s rings often. He learned to patch himself up and he learned not to cry. His father was raising a man, not a pussy. He watched his father beat his mother, too. He stomped her in the kitchen. Called her a whore. An ambulance took her away while Hal’s father sat in the living room with a scotch and water.

  No pussies here.

  Hal’s anger hid his sadness like a glacier, a layer that would take centuries to melt. Drayton did not judge this man. After all, it took Drayton that long to resolve his own madness and rage.

  Drayton opened his eyes, lifted his gaze to Hal’s. With a thought, he removed the ice, exposed Hal’s pain and fear all at once. Showed him the depth of his neglected soul. Revealed the insatiable sadness he had avoided all his life. The things he did not remember. The things he did not feel.

  The things he cared not to see.

  Hal’s tongue stopped working. His chest heaved once. Twice. The color on his cheeks drained away under a sheet of sweat. Hal took a step back, clutched his chest.

  Aaron jumped out of the truck. “You all right, dad?”

  Hal concentrated on breathing, yanked his arm away from his son. Aaron retreated slowly, unsure if his father would fall over in the next second. Hal wiped his whole head and all his chins. Twice. His mouth worked rapidly, but words could not make their way out, only the gummy sound of his tongue working for saliva. He felt his way along the hood, still trying to speak, and got into the truck. His pasty, colorless complexion was evident through the tinted window. His mouth still working. He backed the truck up, nice and easy. He didn’t spin the wheels and throw dirt and rocks, he just pulled out.

  They watched him roll out of sight in disbelief. Hal Towgard had never left without the last word.

  “Don’t ya’ll have to finish feeding?” Annie said.

  They returned to their chores. No one spoke a word. But they all knew things had just changed forever.

  XVI

  Hal stopped at the end of the drive, stared straight ahead at the reflective blue marker pinned to the water oak across the road. The truck idled in place. He gripped the steering with both hands. The rubber material twisted under his sweaty palms. He just needed to catch his breath, but no matter how hard he tried, the next breath came a little faster, a littler shallower. The boy’s eyes… they were…

  Once, when Hal was seven, he went to open the gate to the pasture. One of the wires was hot, but he’d seen his dad grab the other wires a hundred times. They weren’t all hot. But when Hal touched that wire, a jolt rattled through him, shook fingers, toes and nuts all at the same time. He tried to let go but the wire had him now. It grabbed back, sucked his fingers around it tight.

  The boy’s eyes were like that. They were a hot wire. They wouldn’t let go.

  Only they didn’t deliver a jolt. It was sickness that rolled in his stomach. It was cold. Spoiled. Rotten. It reached up and clenched his heart. He tried to look away, but couldn’t. He felt colder. Foul.

  “You all right?” Aaron sat up in the back seat.

  “Fine, fine.”

  Aaron didn’t move. Hal waved him off and turned left. He flipped the A/C off.

  XVII

  Drayton cleaned the last steel bucket and placed it in line with the others. He dried his hands and hung the towel on a hook. Everything was in place. He was just about finished. The sun was down and the sky dimming. Drayton stepped outside the feed room. The horses were lined up at the fence, watching him. Each of them nuzzled his outstretched hand as he passed, bowed their heads.

  Drayton watched darkness settle while dishes clattered inside the house. The light cast out from the kitchen. Annie was busy at the sink. They’d asked him to join them for dinner, but Drayton politely declined. He needed to move on. Food did nothing to quell the ache and it had been several months since he truly fed. The time was near. After that, maybe he would spend some time in a city where feeding was easy. Plenty of dying in the city. Maybe Charlotte, this time.

  The horses pushed each other to get their turn with Drayton. Bo was coming from the house. Drayton sensed the cool silkiness of his essence flowing as he neared. He kept himself centered to avoid absorbin
g some of it. But it felt so good. The horses felt the flare of his instincts, reared up and fled across the pasture. Drayton gripped the fence, eyes closed, bringing control to his body.

  “What’s with them?” Bo rested the heel of his boot on the lowest rail of the fence.

  “A little spooked.”

  “Yeah, well, supper’s still waiting for you. Mama told me not to ask this time but to drag you inside. She wants to apologize for Mr. Towgard’s behavior, or something.”

  “No need. Your hospitality is much appreciated, but I must excuse myself, once again.”

  “She ain’t going to like that much, Drayton. She’ll come out here and feed you like a baby if you keep resisting.”

  Drayton smiled. The horses had settled down in the far corner, keeping a wary eye out for predators.

  “You’ll make a fine gentleman, Bo,” Drayton said.

  Bo bowed his head. His laughter was so punctual it gave the horses a start. “What’re you talking about? Gentleman? I’m a good ole’ boy, Drayton. If you want me out there sipping tea with you in the morning, it ain’t going to happen any time soon.”

  He smacked Drayton on the shoulder, started back for the house laughing as he went. “I’ll tell Mama you ain’t coming,” he called. “You best hide.”

  XVIII

  Young’s room was dark except for the blue glow of his computer screen. He was tapping the keys, muttering to himself. Sometimes arguing with himself. He ran his finger down a list of names, mumbling them in supersonic speed. He unfolded a lined sheet of paper and jotted some down. The lead broke. He wheeled the chair around.